Jacques Firmin Beauvarlet

Who was Jacques Firmin Beauvarlet?

Jacques Firmin Beauvarlet, a celebrated engraver, was born at Abbeville in 1731. He went to Paris when young, and was instructed in the art by Charles Dupuis and Laurent Cars. His first manner was bold and free, and his plates in that style are preferred by some to the more finished and highly-wrought prints that he afterwards produced, although it must be confessed that the latter are executed with great neatness and delicacy. Beauvarlet married, in 1761, Catherine Jeanne Françoise Deschamps, a young lady who possessed some skill in engraving, but who died in 1769 at the age of thirty-one. He married again in 1770, but became for a second time a widower in 1779. Eight years later, in 1787, he married Marie Catherine Riollet, who, like his first wife, was an engraver. She was born in Paris in 1755, and is said to have died in 1788. Beauvarlet himself died in Paris in 1797. The following are his principal works: