The Sense of Smell

The solubility of red chalk, also called "sanguine" because its color is akin to that of sang ("blood," in French), makes it suitable for the creation of counterproofs. The only surviving counterproof in a set of five examples based upon Bouchardon’s unlocated drawings of the five senses, The Sense of Smell depicts a boy holding a flowering plant and a dog sniffing acanthus-like leaves for olfactory proof of a previous canine visitor. The horizontally oriented hatching that surrounds the central figure calls to mind the lines that Bouchardon, best known as a sculptor, made with his chisel when working in three dimensions. It also evokes the lines incised in metal plates used to make etchings and engravings, which, like counterproofs, replicate their originals in reverse.

A counterproof is created when a dampened piece of paper is applied to a dampened drawing or print before both are run through a printing press. Loosened by moisture, a portion of the ink, chalk, or graphite transfers to the new support, forming a mirror image of its source. Counterproofs are recognizable by their relative faintness and the direction of parallel lines known as hatching. Lines created by right-handed artists tend to slope upward from left to right, but are reversed in counterproofs.

This rudimentary form of replication provides a means for artists to alter their compositions for aesthetic and pragmatic purposes. Some use counterproofs to create new works through the reversal of an extant drawing or print, while others turn to them as sites of imaginative experimentation. Since an etching or engraving is a mirror image of the plate used to create it, counterproofs of prints have the same orientations as their plates. Printmakers therefore often use them when planning alterations to their work. As unique reproductions, counterproofs challenge the traditional hierarchy that favors drawings as unmediated records of artists’ hands over prints, which multiply their designs.