Cleveland Museum of Art

The Woman Taking Coffee

Louis-Marin Bonnet

Date

1774

Medium

Color pastel–manner etching and engraving with applied gold leaf

Culture

France, 18th century

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This print belongs to a series created by Louis-Marin Bonnet featuring innovative color printing techniques derived from optical science to mimic the pastel drawings and miniature paintings highly sought by collectors. To increase the works’ appeal, the artist also developed a method for printing decorative frames by applying gold leaf. Hoping to evade strict governmental regulations on the uses of gold in France, he passed off his prints as English imports, which he sold at his store Au Magasin Anglois (At the English Shop). Bonnet’s elaborate ruse included English titles, the address of a London printshop, and a pseudonym, L. Marin. The elaborate gold frame surrounding this print was created with some of the same techniques used to gild frames in the 1700s.

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