François-Nicolas Martinet

Fran�ois Nicolas Martinet.� Ornithologie [= Histoire des Oiseaux Peints dans Tous Leurs Aspects Apparents et Sensibles ].� [Paris: by the Artist?], 1773-1792. Fran�ois Nicolas Martinet engraved illustrations of birds for books by some of the most influential ornithologists in 18th-century France.� Born in 1731, Martinet was trained as an engineer and draftsman.� Engraving illustrations for books probably began as a secondary profession, but as his popularity and output grew it must have consumed the majority of his time.� Martinet's son Alexandre eventually assisted him and made many engravings, as is known from signatures and dates on the prints.� Martinet also had two sisters, Ang�lique and Marie Th�r�se, who were engravers as well, but it is not known if they worked with him.� Towards the end of his career, Martinet drew upon his experience in engraving birds for others to publish his own ornithology books, producing plates until his death sometime in the late 1780s or early 1790s (sources disagree on the year). To understand the significance of Fran�ois Martinet's work, it is important first to recognize the difficulties involved in producing illustrations of birds in the 18th century.� This provides a foundation for viewing the development of Martinet�s bird illustrations and their contribution to works that became classics in the history of ornithology and makes possible a fuller appreciation of the beautiful hand-colored plates in Ornithologie , the folio reproduced in this digital edition.�� In the 1700s most of the illustrators, engravers, and other skilled craftsmen and -women who worked on bird illustrations for books were generally considered to be quite separate from the �fine� artists who made paintings of birds for their artistic beauty.� This distinction reflects the fact that ornithological books to that point had been produced primarily for the identification and classification of the birds, and draftsmanship was more important than artistic composition and other aesthetic considerations (although there are many notable exceptions in which both science and art are achieved).� Printing was in black and white, and any coloring had to be added by hand to the individual prints afterward.� Thus, illustrations in books tended more often to be plain black-and-white; they were more affordable to produce and therefore more affordable to purchase.� Hand-colored illustrations were produced in selected instances, but they were labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive and consequently were available only to the wealthy.� Among those who could afford them, natural-history books containing hand-colored engravings became increasingly popular during the late 1700s.� It became fashionable to display folios of hand-colored plates in one�s home, similar to the modern enjoyment of �coffee-table� books; and individual, loose illustrations were sold for display in portfolios or on walls, again much as we still do. Fran�ois Martinet became well respected for his engravings because he learned how to bring realism to his bird illustrations, a skill not easily acquired.� Earlier engravings often depicted birds disproportionately, or outright incorrectly, in stiff, unnatural poses, making it difficult for anyone but an experienced ornithologist to identify the species concerned.� Only the most obvious birds such as the hoopoe, with its orange plumage and distinctive headpiece (see plate 24 in Ornithologie ), were easily recognizable.� The difficulty which all natural-history illustrators, including Martinet, encountered was that they had to use their imagination to make realistic images using as models birds that were either constantly in motion or, more frequently the case, dead. It is important to note that prior to and during the period of Martinet�s career attempts at preserving specimens were largely unsuccessful. Variations in preservation methods include