Getty Museum

September: Picking Fruit

Date

about 1700

Medium

Brush and gray wash and black chalk, incised for transfer throughout (recto); Covered with red chalk for transfer, previously indented with a stylus (verso)

Culture

French

Department

Drawings

Institution

Getty Museum

In this rustic scene, farmers harvest fruit in an orchard: workers load a mule with baskets, apple-pickers collect fruit among trees and branches, children munch on apples, and in the distance two farmhands sort and store their bounty. This drawing is a highly finished preparatory study for _Les Divertissements et les occupations de la campagne_, a print series published by Jean Mariette in Paris around 1700. In order to transfer the design to the copper engraving plate, the back of this drawing was covered in red chalk, placed on the plate, and a stylus was used to go over the outlines. This left traces of red chalk on the plate which could then be worked up with a burin.

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