LE CLERC, Sébastien I

Sébastien Le Clerc I (also Leclerc), printmaker, draughtsman and military engineer, part of a French family of artists. Laurent Le Clerc (1590-1695) was a goldsmith from Metz. The most prominent members of the Leclerc family were his son Sébastien Leclerc I and Sébastien's son Sébastien Le Clerc II. Another son of Sébastien Le Clerc, Louis-Auguste Le Clerc (1699-1771), was a sculptor and pupil of Antoine Coysevox; from 1735 he worked in Denmark, becoming professor at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skonne Kunster in Copenhagen. His son and pupil Jacques-Sébastien Le Clerc (1734-1785) became a painter, producing small-scale amorous scenes; from 1778 he taught at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris.

Sébastien Le Clerc I probably learnt the rudiments of drawing and engravingGLOSSARYA print made from a metal plate that has had a design cut into it with a sharp point. Ink is smeared over the plate and then wiped off, the ink remaining in the etched lines being transferred when the plate is pressed very firmly onto a sheet of paper. from his father, and also from Claude Bouchard, a copper-plate printer; however, he soon abandoned line engraving for etching. Le Clerc's earliest works that can be securely dated are from the years 1654-55. His first important series were the Life of St Benedict (1658-59) and Les Modes de Metz, later republished in Paris. Having also studied geometry, perspectiveGLOSSARYThe method of representing three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Perspective gives a picture a sense of depth. The most important form of perspective in the Renaissance was linear perspective (first formulated by the architect Brunelleschi in the early 15th century), in which the real or suggested lines of objects converge on a vanishing point on the horizon, often in the middle of the composition (centralized perspective). The first artist to make a systematic use of linear perspective was Masaccio, and its principles were set out by the architect Alberti in a book published in 1436. The use of linear perspective had a profound effect on the development of Western art and remained unchallenged until the 20th century. and mathematics, Le Clerc became in 1660 a military engineer, working for Henri, Maréchal de La Ferté-Sénectere (1600-80), governor of Lorraine.