18. Jacques-Fabien Gautier Dagoty
(1717-1785)
Jean-Philippe Rameau

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Dagoty, Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Mezzotint, 1770, 253 x 206 mm., Portalis & Béraldi 9. The Dagoty (or Gautier-Dagoty) family members were the major practitioners in France of the quintessentially British technique of mezzotint. This is a human and sympathetic portrait of Rameau in his later years, presumably based on a drawing made shortly before his death. A fine impression, with very slight surface rubbing, on laid paper with good margins. Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) was the greatest composer of operas in France in the eighteenth century, a prolific composer of chamber and keyboard music and the author of probably the most important work of music theory of the century, in all, a worthy contemporary of Bach, Handel and Scarlatti.