Women at the Margins of the Printed Page: Engraving Science in Enlightenment France

• In Event: Engravers and Engraving: Visions of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Europe

English Abstract

This paper analyzes female engravers and illustrators in eighteenth-century France who participated in the creation of a visual culture of scientific inquiry across a breadth of disciplines—from mathematics and physics to botany and anatomy. Drawing on the concept of the “invisible assistant,” I suggest that an array of female artisans participated in both visible and invisible ways in the production of printed scientific imagery, as skilled craftspeople who openly signed their handiwork while privately navigating the vagaries of poor pay and piecemeal work within male-only institutions, like the Paris Royal Academy of Sciences.

Using the relatively unknown examples of the botanical illustrator Mlle Basseporte, the natural illustrator Mlle Fonbonne, and the illustrator-engraver team of sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth Haussard, this paper casts light on the value of engraving and illustration within scientific knowledge production and women’s multiple and sometimes competing positions of marginality, as assistants of visual knowledge to male producers of textual knowledge. It also considers how female artisans versed in engraving and drawing techniques contributed to the formulation of scientific ideas through their iconographic representations, and how intellectual and economic negotiations colored their working relationships with male scientists and academic institutions. I conclude by considering the reverse side of the coin, briefly exploring two women, Mme Thiroux d’Arconville and Mme du Coudray, who enjoyed positions as overseers of the production of engravings intended to accompany their respective scientific textbooks.

Author

• Margaret Carlyle, University of British Columbia Okanagan