Civil Architecture includes a number of didactic sheets outlining visual models for technical draftsmanship. This page offers instructions for creating volume and using light and shadow to define complex three-dimensional objects, like armillary spheres and terrestrial globes. The caption at bottom, “Globe of the Earth, or a framework of a dome,” reflects the wide range of subjects encompassed by Lequeu’s guidelines.
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826)
Study of Spheres, from Civil Architecture,
Pen and black ink, gray wash
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departement des Estampes et de la photographie
Jennifer Tonkovich: Lequeu mastered the art of modeling form using only the white of the paper and black ink in different concentrations. This type of shading was what he referred to as his black manor. He prided himself on his expertise with gouache and sought to become a proponent of this method of drawing. Teaching was a critical part of Lequeu's life. In the opening text for his civil architecture, he penned an address to lovers and friends of the arts with an offer to instruct them in his method. He describes his qualifications as an instructor: "Sir Lequeu, who studied architecture under enlightened masters at Rouen, having nothing so much at heart as to deserve the esteem and protection of the city of Paris, and to offer its citizens his services, announces an office where he will give drawing lessons, both of figure and of architectural ornament. Lequeu joins a knowledge of the plans and details of construction, which he does in his daily work and the drawing of the figure in ink in the black manor. Convinced that this bold genre might interest people whose taste for the fine arts animates them and makes them desire guidance in the use of gouache for drawings of portraits, landscapes, maps, and architecture, he will give them lessons." Despite his willingness, Lequeu did not attract sufficient students to support himself as a drawing instructor and spent the majority of his career working as a Draftsman for the Land Registry Office.