c. 1778

Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Huet Making a Chalk Drawing

French, 1736 - 1793

Seated by a top-floor window, the artist portrayed here has natural light to draw by. Amid the tools piled at the base of the bull's-eye decorative frame are several objects that emphasize the fundamental importance of drawing for eighteenth-century artists: a plaster bust to sketch from, an open drawing manual, a composition drawn on a canvas, and a rolled-up male academy (or drawing of a nude). Louis-Marin Bonnet himself engraved many illustrations for drawing manuals and probably created An Artist Making a Chalk Drawing for one of these sets of instructive prints.