Authorship, the Académie, and the market in early modern France

Oxford Art Journal

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 27-41

  Scott, Katie ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0006227614     PISSN: 01426540     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/oxartj/21.1.27     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. See Marianne Grivel, Le Commerce de l'estampe à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Geneva, 1986), pp. 104-12
2. In the book trade the system of privileges constituted not simply commercial protection but a licence to publish which it was compulsory to obtain. On copyright and the book trade in France, see most recently Raymond Birn, 'The profit in ideas. Privilèges en librairie in eighteenth-century France', Eighteenth-century Studies, vol. 4, 1971, pp. 131-68
3. Carla Hesse, 'Enlightenment epistemology and the laws of authorship in Revolutionary France, 1777-1793', Representations, vol. 30, Spring 1990, pp. 109-37
4. See Grivel, Le Commerce, p. 91. Albert Vaunois cites two earlier instances - a privilège obtained by Etienne Delaune (d. 1583) for a Combat de génies and one purchased by the print publisher Paul de La Houve in 1600 for portrait prints of Henri III, Henri IV, Catherine de Bourbon and the marquise de Verneuil by Jan Wierix and Hendrik Goltzius - but without citing his sources
5. See Albert Vaunois, La Condition et les droits d'auteur des artistes jusqu'à la Révolution (Paris, 1892), p. 37
6. Privilèges généraux, overwhelmingly the most commonly used form of protection, cost 31 livres 10 sous in 1704 rising to 101 livres 2 sous in 1768. The figures are taken from Peter Fuhring, 'The print publishing privilege in eighteenth-century France. Part I', Print Quarterly, 1985, vol. 2, no. 3, p. 178
7. For the figure for the seventeenth century see Grivel, Le Commerce p. 107. For the eighteenth century see Pierre Casselle, Le Commerce des estampes à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle (unpublished thesis, Ecole Nationale des Chartes, 1976), p. 30
8. See David Saunders, Authorship and Copyright (London and New York, 1992), p. 6
9. See Fuhring, 'The Print Publishing Privilege' (1985), pp. 176-8
10. See Alexandre Tuetey, 'Un procès de Rubens à Paris contre le graveur allemand Jacques Hovervogt', Bulletin de la société de l'histoire de l'art français, 1918, pp. 34-41
11. For the history of the emergence of international laws of copyright, see Pierre Raynard and Marguerite Vanel (eds.), Dalloz. Encyclopédie juridique. Répertoire de droit civil (Paris, 1975), vol. 6, ad. voc. 'propriété littéraire et artistique'
12. See Fuhring, 'The Print Publishing Privilege', p. 185
13. The privilege of 24/vi/1767 concerned the Paralytique servi par ses enfants, L'Accordée du Village, La Mère bien Aimée, La Mort du Père de Famille, and L'Enfant Gâté. Bib. Nat. MS f.f. 21964. On Greuze and his printmakers, see Françoise Arquie-Bruley, 'Documents notariés inédits sur Greuze', Bulletin de la société de l'histoire de l'art français, 1981, pp. 125-54
14. I use the masculine deliberately because the act of 1793 did not recognize the rights of women but transferred them automatically to their fathers or husbands. See Carla Hesse, 'Reading signatures: female authorship and revolutionary law in France, 1750-1850', Eighteenth-century Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, 1989, pp. 469-87
15. See Adrien Gastambide, Traité théorique et pratique des contrefaçons en tout genre (Paris, 1837), p. 295
16. See Michel Foucault, 'What is an Author?', in Donald Bouchard (ed.), Language, Countermemory, Practice. Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Oxford, 1977), pp. 113-38
17. While exemplary historical accounts of the application or use of copyright have been published, most notably for this period by Marianne Grivel, Pierre Casselle and Peter Fuhring, relatively little attention has been given to the theoretical assumptions underlying the notion of a copyright. For one exception see Molly Nesbit's outstanding, 'What was an Author?', Yale French Studies, no. 73, 1987, pp. 229-57
18. For Foucault's own account of the genesis of the essay, see Foucault, 'What is an Author?' (1977), pp. 113-14
19. On the specific issue of the separation between art and industry more or less effected by copyright, see my forthcoming 'Art and industry, copyrights and patents: print piracy in the Parisian wallpaper trade' forthcoming in John Brewer and Andrea Carlino (eds.), Graphic Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1998)
20. François Courboin, L'Estampe française. Graveurs et marchands (Paris, 1914), p. 130
21. For the other court actions see, Raymond Gaubriault, La Gravure de mode feminine en France (Paris, 1983), p. 37
22. On the prints, see Raymond Gaudriault, Répertoire de la gravure de mode française des origines à 1815 (Paris, 1988), pp. 146-70
23. See for example the opening paragraphs of Basset's Réponse, pp. 1-2
24. See for example, Basset's accusation that Esnauts and Rapilly were complete hypocrites in Basset, Réponse, pp. 17-18
25. For a suggestive discussion of text as a physical object, see D.F. McKenzie, 'Typography and meaning: the case of William Congreve', in G. Baker and B. Fabian (eds.), Buch und Buchhandel in Europa im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 1981), pp. 81-126
26. Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (Paris, 1701), vol. 1, ad. voc. 'auteur'
27. For a fuller discussion of legal claims upon ideas during the Ancien Régime see Carla Hesse, 'Enlightenment' (1990)
28. See Appendix I. For a wider discussion of the problem of multiples in sculpture, published too late for me to take advantage of here, see Anthony Hughes and Eric Ranfft (eds.), Sculpture and its Reproductions (London, 1997)
29. on the publication of the cabinet du roi see A. Jammes, 'Louis XIV, sa bibliothèque et le Cabinet du Roi', The Library, March 1965, pp. 1-12
30. 'Monsieur Coysevox ayant fait le portrait du Roy regnant et craignant que quelques Maīstres-Sculpteurs n'en moulassent des copies pour vendre au public, ce qui est expressement deffendu par un Arrest du Conseil du 21 Juin 1676 a requis l'Académie de vouloir enregistrer afin de servir du certificat de la presente déliberation, selon qu'il avisera bon estre dans les conjonctures qui pourront arriver' (P.V., 5/ix/1716, vol. iv (1705-1725), p. 231). According to a life of Coysevox drawn up in 1718, the sculptor produced four busts of Louis XV as a child. One was displayed in the chambre du conseil at the Louvre, another belonged to the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans, another to Mme de Ventadour, the king's governess, and the fourth to Dupuy, avocat général du grand conseil. See Dussieux, Mémoires inédits sur la vie et les ouvrages des membres de l'Académie de peinture et sculpture, 2 vols. (Paris, 1854), vol. 1, p. 38
31. See also François Souchal, French Sculptors in the Reign of Louis XIV (Oxford, 1977), vol. 1, p. 218. According to Souchal the whereabouts of the bust are currently unknown
32. See George Chabaud, La Protection légale des dessins et modèles (Paris, 1913), p. 27
33. Cited in Albert Vaunois, Les Dessins et modèles de fabrique. Doctrine, législation, jurisprudence (Paris, 1898), p. 6
34. See Mémoire pour Louis Simonneau graveur, & de l'Académie de Peinture et Sculpture, demandeur en saisie & confiscation d'atampes contrfaites au préjudice de son privilege du Grand Sceau, suivant l'Arrest du Conseil du 4 May 1711. Contre Jean-François Cars, Claude Malbouré, Antoine Herisset, Graveurs, & Joseph Limousin, vitrier, défandeurs, s.l.n.d., p. 1 (Bib. Nat. Imp. fol. Fm 15775). Simmoneau had started work on this plate and its pendant Susannah and the elders (pirated by Herisset) twelve years earlier and had taken out two successive privilèges for them on 3/x/1706 and 14/iv/1709. On the paintings, see Nicole Garnier, Antoine Coypel (Paris, 1989), no. 54, pp. 122-3; no. 105, pp. 159-60
35. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 126-9
36. Journal de Paris, no. 61, 1 March 1780, pp. 253-4
37. Journal de Paris, no. 66, 6 March 1780, p. 275
38. 'en vendant tel tableau ou telle statue, ne vendent point leur gloire & leur réputation. Pour s'en déssaisir, il faudroit qu'a leur nom, qui est le cachet de leur propriété quant à la gloire, ils substituassent sur leurs morceaux le nom de l'Aquéreur. Les Artistes se garderoient bien d'y consentir & les Amateurs de l'exiger des Artistes; ainsi la réputation de ces derniers est donc un bien inaliénable, & qui leur appartient tout entier, lors même que leurs ouvrages ne leur appartiennent plus: c'est pourquoi le Souverain leur a donné le droit d'empêcher qu'il y fut porté atteinte ...' (Journal de Paris, no. 76, 16 March 1780, pp. 314-15)
39. M. Plaisant and O. Pichot, La Conférence de Rome. Commentaire pratique de la nouvelle convention pour la protection internationale de la propriété littéraire et artistique (Paris, 1934), pp. 50-1. Quoted from Saunders, Authorship and Copyright, p. 31
40. Watelet and Levesque commented, for instance, that 'ceux qui les [the arts] cultivent, fuyent les procès, in de litibus' (Dictionnaire des arts de peinture, sculpture et gravure, 5 vols. (Paris, 1792), vol. 5, ad. voc. 'procès' pp. 192-209). The compilers were principally concerned with disputes over payment to painters but squeemishness concerning litigation presumably also applied to other contentious matters such as copyright
41. See Scott, 'Art and Industry' (1998)