Representation of work on the Orléans bridge

It was in the practice of landscape drawing that Aignan-Thomas Desfriches, a former pupil of Bertin and Natoire turned prosperous businessman, found his artistic fulfillment. When he had to give up a career as a painter to take over his father's business, his ambitions shifted to the practice of drawing, whose ease of application remained compatible with his occupations. However, it was not until he had spent several years traveling to set up the family business that he was able to develop his career as an amateur artist, around 1745. A yearning for nature, combined with his collector's taste for the Flemish and Dutch schools, made landscapes his preferred genre. The Orléanais region, and the banks of the Loiret in particular, formed the repertoire from which he developed a picturesque style that, through its combination of the rustic and the idyllic, and the charm of its figures, prefigured the worlds of Pillement, Boissieu and Moreau l'Aîné. For over twenty years, he practiced the traditional techniques of graphite and black stone. His reputation as a draughtsman grew with the invention, in 1767, of "papier-tablette", a sheet of paper coated with a thin layer of kaolin, on which the black stone line, blurring and scratching the surface, produced new graphic acuity and atmospheric effects. Although his works were initially reserved for his entourage, his biographer reports examples of the considerable market value of some of them, such as the one acquired by the Grand Duke of Tuscany from Natoire for the sum of nine hundred and fifty livres, to be donated to Pope Pius VI.

In the 18th century, Orleans found its official portraitist in Desfriches. A few years after he took up his pencils again, the construction site for the new Orléans bridge, to replace the ruined medieval Tourelles bridge, provided him with the opportunity for a reportage in several drawings where engineering interest competes with the picturesque. The project was inspired by his friendship with the Ponts et Chaussées engineer Robert Soyer (1717-1802), who was sent from Paris to manage the worksite and lived with Desfriches until his death. A first view of the work on the Pont d'Orléans (private collection), dated 1750, a year before the first stone was laid, shows the structures on stilts in a dry part of the riverbed, where a large crowd of workers is busy. A second drawing, engraved by Pierre Quentin Chedel, shows the same structures "as they were on July 28, 1752", as the letter indicates, drawn "de dessus l'Isle de la Mothe poissonnière, which includes the location of 3 piers and an abutment" (inv. 71.7.35 MHAO). A third composition, Addition au pont d'Orléans (inv. 2020.20.1 MBAO), also engraved by Chedel, depicts the installation of a mill to drain the water needed for the foundation of the piers. The last known sequence in this series, La Représentation des travaux du pont d'Orléans illustrates the construction of the three arches linking Quai Cypierre (right bank) to Île Saint-Antoine in the middle of the river, during the year 1755, on the framework of hangers lifted by cranes. Like the first two views, this one, in the foreground, is animated by intense activity, that of the river traffic of toues and gabares (Loire boats) loaded with bargemen transporting goods and passengers.