Hagar Received by Abraham.

After Phillip van Dyk, engraved by Jean Massard Hagar received by Abraham. "Agar recue par Abraham." Dediée à la Reine. Paris Jean Massard ,"Tiré du Cabinet de Mr. Servai chez l'Auteur ,rue Ste. Jacinthe, Place St. Michel, " 1785
Black & white copper engraving after the painting by Phillip van Dyck, engraved by Jean Massard, lettered Dediée à la Reinearound a composition with coats of arms of the Bourbons and the Habsburg-Lorraines Title and text in French.
The image shows the young Egyptian slave, naked, with the aged Abraham, in a richly draped bedroom, with Sarah, his wife standing above them, a serene and sad expression on her face; a servant peers around a curtain in the background.
The biblical story of how Sarah, Abraham's wife due to her sterility gives him her Egyptian slave Hagar to lie with to give him an heir is related in Genesis 16: 1-4.
Massard in the etching reproduces a painting entitled Sarah presenting Hagar to Abraham,now in the Louvre, by Philippe van Dyck.
The engraving is dedicated to the queen Marie Antoinette, and it has been suggested that the biblical theme of lack of maternity of Sarah and her marital relations with Abraham, could have been chosen to counter allusions to sexual troubled events of the French royal couple, at the time the subject of numerous satirical pamphlets and pornographic and poisonous gossip at court. The marriage took place in 1770, when the future Louis XVI was still Dauphin of France, and was not, of course, consumed in the first seven years, and Marie Antoinette did not have the first daughter, Maria Teresa Carlotta,until the end of 1778, and will bear the heir to the throne only in October 1781. Good Impression; margins trimmed close to plate mark.

Jean [Baptiste] Massard (1740 - 1822)
Engraver, worked much for Greuze. Founder of a dynasty of engravers.

Philippe van Dyck [ Dijk/ Dyk] (1679 or 83-1752/3), a Dutch Baroque painter history and genre scenes, called by his contemporaries, "the little van Dyck"
Studied in Amsterdam under Arnold Boonen, and then probably in Rotterdam under van der Werff. Taught Hendrik Pothoven, and his nephew and adopted son Philip van Linden van Dijk. Worked in Amsterdam, Middleburg, Cassel and the Hague.
575 by 470mm (22¾ by 18½ inches).   ref: 2695  €300