T.Y Johannot, Les petits Braconneurs (The Little Poachers)

T.Y. Johannot, 1884; signed and dated lower left
"Les petits Braconneurs" (The Little Poachers), titled on the reverse
French School, 19th century
Oil on canvas. 62 cm x 51 cm
Carved stucco frame, vine-leaf pattern, 19th century, gold-gilt
Original frame

Antoine Johannot, known as Tony Johannot—born on November 9, 1803, in Offenbach am Main, Germany, and died on August 4, 1852, in Paris—was a French engraver, illustrator, and painter.
Tony Johannot’s father, François Johannot (born c. 1760, died 1838), managed a silk manufactory in Germany, where the family—originally from the Vivarais region—had settled following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was also a painter and played a role in the development of lithography in France. Tony’s two older brothers, Charles and Alfred, were engravers; Alfred was also a painter and draftsman. Tony learned engraving from his brothers and, together with Alfred, produced steel engravings for works by James Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott. Later, Tony Johannot turned to wood engraving, before returning to etching from 1845 onwards.
He was a highly sought-after illustrator, prized for the elegance, diversity, and liveliness of his drawings. These were engraved either by himself or by engravers such as Jacques Adrien Lavieille, Émile Montigneul, Auguste II Blanchard, Augustin Burdet, Amédée Maulet, Jean-François Pourvoyeur, and Alfred Revel. Théophile Gautier paid him this tribute:
"Tony Johannot is indisputably the king of illustration. A few years ago, no novel or poem could appear without a woodcut vignette bearing his signature; how many heroines—with slender waists, swan-like necks, cascading hair, and tiny feet—did he entrust to China paper!" How many ragged scoundrels, knights in full armor, and scaly, clawed *Tarasques* did he scatter across the fresh-butter or canary-yellow covers of medieval romances! All poetry and literature—ancient and modern—passed through his hands: the Bible, Molière, Cervantes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo—he understood them all. His drawings appear in these admirable volumes, and no one finds them out of place. Alongside those sublime pages and harmonious verses, they serve as an ornament rather than a blemish; what so many diverse geniuses dreamed, he was able to render and translate into his own art.”
As a history painter, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon of 1831.