Children Holding a Candle in a Church
Medium
Lithograph with ochre tint-stone
Dimensions
Sheet: 8 7/8 × 6 11/16 in. (22.5 × 17 cm) Image: 5 1/2 × 4 3/16 in. (14 × 10.6 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection. The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1963
Accession Number
63.625.111
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate lithograph from 1818 captures two children standing together in a church interior, their small figures illuminated by the soft glow of a single candle. Created through the innovative medium of lithography with an ochre tint-stone, the print achieves subtle tonal gradations that lend warmth and intimacy to the scene. The collaboration between painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey, known for his elegant portraits at Napoleon’s court, and pioneering lithographer Godefroy Engelmann reflects the early adoption of this new printing technique in France. Invented only two decades earlier, lithog...
About the Artist
Jean-Baptiste Isabey|Godefroy Engelmann · 1767–1855
Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855) was a French painter and miniaturist whose extraordinary longevity and adaptability allowed him to serve as the preeminent portraitist of successive French regimes — from the court of Louis XVI through the Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, the Restoration, and into the July Monarchy — making his career an almost unparalleled chronicle of French political and socia...