Jacob Folkema

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Jacob Folkema
Dutch, 1692-1767

Meleager and Atalanta, after Charles Lebrun

Etching on laid paper: Plate measures 7-1/4 x 9-1/2 in. (18.4 x 24.1 cm) on full sheet measuring 18 x 11-3/4 in. (45.7 x 29.8 cm)

A perfect impression in perfect condition.

	Provenance: The London art market; Schrader and Smith, Richmond, Virginia

	This rapturously beautiful page comes from a luxurious 18th-century publication of the story of Meleager, which placed the Latin text alongside the English translation. The subjects are taken from a series of paintings by Charles Lebrun, first director of the French Academy; the engraver is Jacob Folkema. Here Meleager meets with his beloved Atalanta, about to begin the hunt for the terrible supernatural boar. Details of the dogs, the hunters, and the landscape approach the very limit of what is possible in an engraving. Jacob Folkema was a Dutch printmaker and draughtsman. The was born in Dokkum in 1692 and died in Amsterdam in 1767. He was trained from an early age by his father Johannes Folkema, a goldsmith, and by Bernard Picart in Amsterdam. His earliest work is the engraving of the Virgin and Child (1707). He made mostly drawings and etchings but also one or two mezzotint portraits. He sometimes used the engraver’s burin to work over areas in shadow. The majority of his 300 or so prints are portraits, topographical views, frontispieces, book illustrations or vignettes. He etched a number of miniature portraits painted by his sister Anna Folkema (1695–1768), who was also an engraver, and contributed prints to the Dresden Gallery, a collection of reproductive engravings after masterpieces from the picture collection in Dresden. Although he worked mostly after other artists’ drawings and paintings, prints such as the illustrations to Cervantes (Amsterdam, 1731) are based on his own designs.