Recueil de portrait
A portrait album published in Paris in 1786 by the engraver Gilles-Louis Chrétien, who issued a series of profile portraits of contemporary men for collectors of prints. The pictures are small, circular, black-and-white engravings in strict side profile, each with a short inscription naming the sitter and the artist. A designer could take from them the clean oval framing device, the tight profile cropping and the powdered wig and high-collared coat details of late eighteenth-century dress.
