I bought this print at David Ferrow's bookshop in Great Yarmouth c1973 and have had it on my website since 1996.It was published in 1810. It is worth making public for its ambitious compositional devices, control of narrative flow, and sheer bloodthirstiness. The engraving is after an original drawing by Louis Lafitte in the collection of M. Laterrade .It was engraved by C.P.N.Normand having been commissioned by the Advocat Lafitte, editor of La Plante newspaper in Dunkirk. There are several duplicates on line, two notable examples handcoloured with copious gore. The central figure is Joseph Le Bon, a particularly nasty piece of work, executed for his crimes in 1795. He was Deputy to the National Convention for Arras and mayor of Arras. The artist (according to the ink inscription is the painter and murallist Louis Lafitte (1770 - 1828). Lafitte won the Prix de Rome in 1791, but was forced to flee to Florence during anti-French riots, and returned to France in 1796, and received some employment under the Revolution. |