BARON, Bernard

French engraver active in England. He was the pupil and son-in-law of Nicolas-Henry Tardieu. In 1712 the French engraver Claude Du Bosc (active c. 1711-1740) brought Baron to London to assist with the engraving of murals at Marlborough House. In 1724 Baron engraved eight plates of the Life of Achilles after Rubens. Five years later he returned to Paris where he engraved L’Accord parfait, the first of his four prints for the celebrated Recueil Jullienne collection of the works of Antoine Watteau. Two of the other Watteau paintings that he engraved belonged to the painter’s English physician Dr Richard Mead and the fourth, Les Deux Cousines, Baron owned himself. A drawing by Watteau of an engraver at work (British Museum, London) is believed to depict Baron.

While in France, Baron also engraved Titian’s Pardo Venus for the second volume (published 1742) of the Recueil Crozat, a compendium of prints of Italian pictures in French collections. The inclusion of a portrait of Baron in a painting by Gavin Hamilton, A Conversation of Virtuosis at the Kings Armes (1734-35; National Portrait Gallery, London), demonstrates that he mixed with many of England’s leading artists, sculptors and architects. In 1745 he was one of four Frenchmen selected by William Hogarth to engrave plates for Marriage à la Mode in order to appeal to an aristocratic audience. Baron engraved portraits by Hogarth and Allan Ramsay and works by Holbein, van Dyck and Titian, including the latter’s Vendramin Family.