Learning Resisting the Passage of Time.

After François-Guillaume Ménageot by Jean-Jacques Avril. Learning Resisting the Passage of Time "L'Étude qui veut Arrêter le Temps." Gravé par Avril, d'après le Tableau, Original, Pient par Mangeot, pour sa Récéption àL'Académie Royale. Paris "chez Avril, Graveur, Rue de Petit Bourbon, no 23 , près St Suplice" c1781
Copper engraving by Avril of Ménageot's painting "L'Étude qui veut Arrêter le Temps." Title and text in French; later hand colour.
The image shows Learning , in a room surrounded by a globe , books and manuscripts engaged, in reading a book pushing away the figure of Time, a winged aged man holding his Scythe aloft; two putti plead with him at his feet. Dark impression; light spotting to blank margins; tiny hole on Time's torso, just below Learning's hand; small lack of engraved area in upper engraved border.

François-Guillaume Ménageot (1744–1816)
was a French painter of religious and French historical scenes. A pupil of François Boucher (1703–1770), he went on to win the Grand Prix de Rome and become a director of the French Academy in Rome, an academician and a member of the Institute .& member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He would be elected to the Academy in 1780 for his painting "L'Étude qui veut Arrêter le Temps."
Ménageot was born in London, the son of Augustin Ménageot (d 1784), an art dealer and adviser to Denis Diderot. François-Guillaume trained under first Jean-Baptiste-Henri Deshays, then Joseph-Marie Vien, and finally François Boucher (1703–1770), in his early works adopting the latter's style and use of warm, light colours.
His 1766 Tomyris Plunging the Head of Cyrus into a Bowl of Blood won the Prix de Rome and a stay at the French Academy in Rome from 1769 to 1774.
The Académie Royalein Paris approved François-Guillaume as a history painter in 1777, and he then exhibited The Farewells of Polyxena to Hecuba at the Salon, and it received a good reception, as did his entrance piece Learning Resisting the Passage of Time (1780; and his 1781 Death of Leonardo da Vinci in the Arms of Francis IHe and other painters led French painting to return to the Grand Style, with more horizontal compositions, more sculptural drapery, colder colouring and set in ever more monumental architecture. He died in Paris.

Jean-Jacques Avril, (1744–1831),
was a French artist and engraver born in Paris who made about 540 engravings, some of large dimensions. He was a pupil of Johann Georg Wille.
His prints bear addresses in the Rue de la Huchette and the Rue du Petit Bourbon.
510 by 377mm (20 by 14¾ inches).   ref: 2678  €500