Jean-François Janinet
French, 1752 - 1814
(b paris, 1752; d paris, 1 nov 1814). french printmaker. he was probably apprenticed to his father françois janinet, a gem-engraver from burgundy. between c. 1770 and c. 1772 he worked in the studio of louis-marin bonnet, who had a considerable reputation as an engraver in the crayon manner and pastel manner. their collaboration continued later with the production of coloured mounts with gilt decorations. although janinet began by executing engravings in the crayon manner, his reputation was based on his perfection of the process of colour printing with a series of plates and the subtle use of special mattoirs and thin layers of ink imitating the tonal effects of brush-and-ink washes, watercolours or gouaches (see gouache manner, §2). in 1772 he published a small oval-print from several plates, the meeting (inventaire de fonds français , no. 2), after clément-pierre marillier, with an inscription that asserted ‘cette planché gravé à l’imitation du lavie en couleur par f. janinet/le seul qui ait trouvé cette manière’. he was essentially a reproductive artist, and he left a copious oeuvre. his prints were rarely dated, but they can be classified according to his successive paris addresses after 1780 (before then he frequently moved house). between 1781 and 1787 he lived in the place maubert and between 1787 and 1792 in the rue hautefeuille. his later works were mainly published by the partnership of esnauts and rapilly. he seems to have found success and wealth early on. his career continued throughout the political upheavals of the french revolution and changes in public taste. he tackled a wide variety of subjects: drawing books in the crayon manner such as principes de dessin d’après nature (1773); genre scenes—which won him most renown—such as the pleasant disarray (1779; after baudouin), the friendly peasant girl (after saint-quentin), and his most popular works, after lafrensen, the comparison (1786), the difficult confession (1787) and the indiscretion (1788). he also worked on mythological scenes such as the toilet of venus (1784; after françois boucher); small-scale portraits such as those of the milliner rose bertin and of queen marie-antoinette (both 1787); portraits of actresses on stage, for example madame dugazon in the role of nina and mlle contat as suzanne in beaumarchais’s le mariage de figaro (see fig.). in a similar vein was the set of 176 plates illustrating le vacher de charnois’s costumes et annales des grands théâtres de paris (1786–9), which janinet took charge of and for which he made most of the engravings. during the revolution janinet was obliged to reproduce the austere allegories of jean-guillaume moitte: la liberté and l’egalité , but he also produced a historical series from his own drawings, consisting of 52 plates in the wash manner: principaux événements depuis l’ouverture des etats généraux .
Grove Art excerpts - Electronic ©2003, Oxford Art Online
http://www.invaluable.com/artist/janinet-jean-francois-fx044g78at
Person TypeIndividual
French, born Flemish, 1722-1776
