Charles-François-Adrien Macret

The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is engraving, copper engraving technique and drawing. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Work by Charles-François-Adrien Macret is recorded in the collections of Philadelphia Museum of Art.

He was the second of seven children born to Jean-Baptiste Macret, a soapmaker, and his wife, Marie-Charlotte. His older sister, Marie-Anne-Françoise-Charlotte, married the painter, Pierre-Adrien Choquet (1743-1813). His youngest brother, Jean-César Macret, also became an engraver. His father died in 1772, when he fell into a soapmaking vat and was fatally scalded. He began his artistic education at the age of thirteen, when he was apprenticed to a metal engraver named Joseph Selik, originally from Hanover, who specialized in heraldry. It was from this first artisanal experience that he made contact with the Parisian engravers, Nicolas-Gabriel Dupuis and Claude-Antoine Littrey de Montigny (c.1735-1775). After their deaths, he continued his studies with Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, Jacques Aliamet and Augustin de Saint-Aubin. He appears to have had a special relationship with Saint-Aubin, who allowed him to take joint credit on several works. In 1777, he married Marie-Julie Petit and they had three children. According to his brother-in-law, Choquet, he was always thin, delicate and sickly. He died of a persistent fever, perhaps aggravated by overwork, aged only thirty-two. What he intended to be his masterwork, a depiction of the Siege of Beauvais (1472), was left unfinished, along with several smaller works.