Merchandising America: American views published by the Maison Goupil.

After breakfast, accompanied by Mr. Boilly, call'd on Mr. Rit[t]ner, printseller, in the Boulevard des Italiens, with a proof of Ariadne, discovered that there was no chance of sale in Paris except at a great sacrifice [...] conclude, therefore, to make no further efforts, but leave the impression I have with me, in the bands of Mr. Boilly until my return in the spring. (1)

Thus did Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886) chronicle his first order of business in Paris, the second capital on his grand tour in 1840 and 1841. On August 5, 1840, he called on Henry Rittner (1802-1840), the leading publisher of fine art reproductions in Paris, in hopes of selling impressions of the line engraving he had made in 1835 after his own copy (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) of John Vanderlyn's Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos of 1812 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia). This is the earliest documented contact between an American artist and the Maison Goupil, the increasingly powerful publishing house that Rittner founded in 1827 and re-formed in 1829 in partnership with Adolphe Goupil (1806-1893). In February 1848, the Maison Goupil would repay Durand's call by establishing a branch in New York City, the first foreign art merchants to do so on a permanent basis.

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It is no wonder Durand sought out Rittner. His Ariadne engraving had been an unrewarding labor of love: most of the edition remained on the shelf five years after the plate was completed. Rittner and Goupil had ascended to the pinnacle of the fine art publishing trade, their reputation for superb line engravings by the finest practitioners of that esteemed craft second to none in France. Bailly, Ward and Company, "fancy goods" merchants on William Street in New York City, (2) had been importing their productions since 1828, and these prints could not have escaped Durand's notice.

The unfortunate Rittner did not live to see Durand resurface in Paris in May 1841, on his way back from Italy to the United States. (3) Because the pages of Durand's travel diary covering his return trip are lost, we cannot know exactly what happened that May; but an entry in the journal of John F. Kensett, who accompanied Durand part way on his journey, hints at the high regard in which the American artists held the French publishers. On January 5, 1841, Kensett wrote:

 
Dropped in at Rittner & Goupil's--in the Boulevard des Italien[s] to see 
proofs of some two or three eng's--that are now under the artists 
hands--subscription prints--one by [Francois] Forster after Del Roche 
[Paul Delaroche], and the other by [Louis Pierre Henriquel-] Dupont 
after Schaeffer [Ary Scheffer], a most capital work. (4)