Callot, Jacques (French, 1592-1635) Pen and Ink Wash Drawing. “Les Gueux.” In good condition with some light foxing. Signed under the mat “Callot.” Traces of pencil visible in the drawing (see image with staff). Linen Backed. Upper edge taped to paper. One inch tear in the bottom right corner which was affixed to the linen backing. Image size 3 1/8” x 7 ”. Frame measures 9 ” x 13”. From the New York estate of Bernard S. Myers (1909- 1993), Art Historian and Editor.

Jacques-Callot-French-artist: Jacques Callot, (born March-August 1592, Nancy, France--died March 24, 1635, Nancy), French printmaker who was one of the first great artists to practice the graphic arts exclusively. His innovative series of prints documenting the horrors of war greatly influenced the socially conscious artists of the 19th and 20th centuries."Balli di Sfessania"Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum Callot's career was divided into an Italian period (c. 1609-21) and a Lorraine (France) period (from 1621 until his death). He learned the technique of engraving under Philippe Thomassin in Rome. About 1612 he went to Florence. At that time Medici patronage expended itself almost exclusively in feste, quasi-dramatic pageants, sometimes dealing in allegorical subjects, and Callot was employed to make pictorial records of these mannered, sophisticated entertainments. He succeeded in evolving a naturalistic style while preserving the artificiality of the occasion, organizing a composition as if it were a stage setting and reducing the figures to a tiny scale, each one indicated by the fewest possible strokes. This required a very fine etching technique. His breadth of observation, his lively figure style, and his skill in assembling a large, jostling crowd secured for his etchings a lasting popular influence all over Europe. Callot also had a genius for caricature and the grotesque. His series of plates of single or dual figures--for example, the Balli di Sfessania ("Dance of Sfessania"), the Caprices of Various Figures, and the Hunchbacks--are witty and picturesque and show a rare eye for factual detail With a few exceptions, the subject matter of the etchings of the Lorraine period is less frivolous, and Callot was hardly employed at all by the court at Nancy. He illustrated sacred books, made a series of plates of the Apostles, and visited Paris to etch animated maps of the sieges of La Rochelle and the ?le de R?. In his last great series of etchings, the "small" (1632) and the "large" (1633) The Miseries and Misfortunes of War, he brought his documentary genius to bear on the atrocities of the Thirty Years' War. Callot is also well known for his landscape drawings in line and wash and for his quick figure studies in chalk.

From March 3, 1993 NY Times: Bernard S. Myers, an art historian and editor who wrote on German expressionist and Mexican art, died on Sunday at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 84 and lived in Brooklyn Heights. The cause was pneumonia, said his son, Peter, also of Brooklyn. Mr. Myers was born in New York and earned a doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1933. After teaching at New York University, the Art Students League and City University of New York, he became editor in chief for art books at McGraw-Hill in 1959, a position he held until 1970. His own books included "Modern Art in the Making," "Mexican Painting in Our Time," "The German Expressionists" and "Problems of the Younger American Artist." With the help of his wife, Shirley D. Myers, he edited the five-volume McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Art. He also served as a consulting editor for the 16-volume McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Art. He was a president of the Alumni Association of the Institute of Fine Arts and a fellow of the Bollingen and Rockefeller foundations. In addition to his son and his wife, he is survived his daughter, Lucie E. Myers, of Shelter Island, L.I., and two grandchildren.