Sanctioned by France’s Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and struck primarily in order to disseminate the works of the Academy’s members, the eighteenth-century fine art print flourished only briefly. Yet it set into motion the interdependence of graphic and pictorial media.

In The Rise and Fall of the Fine Art Print in Eighteenth-Century France, W. McAllister Johnson distills a lifetime of research into an essential study of this seminal phenomenon and chronicles the issues, decisions, and practicalities inherent in making copperplate engravings as articles of art and commerce. His exceptional erudition makes this an unparalleled resource for the study of visual culture and of all aspects of printmaking before the French Revolution.