Fait à la plume: Antoine Overlaet (1720-1774) and his copies of Rembrandt, Rubens and Teniers
The eighteenth-century Antwerp artist Antoine Overlaet, by profession a ‘broodbakker’, was also a meticulous and skilled draughtsman who specialised in copies of prints, primarily by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists, notably by Rembrandt (1606-1669) and after Rubens (1577-1640) and Teniers (1610-1690).1 In addition, he made careful copies of Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) and some French artists including Jacques Callot (1592-1635) and Claude Mellan (1598-1688). Overlaet sought to mimic to an uncanny extent in pen and brown ink the distinct qualities of the techniques of drypoint, etching and engraving.