Simon Charles Miger

Simon Charles Miger , born with Nemours the February 19th 1736 and died in Paris the February 28th 1828, is a engraver French, known especially for the boards which it carried out for the Menagerie of the national Natural history museum of natural history of Lacépède, Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier.

Its life and its work

Wire of a tanner who sends it to make his studies in Paris, it vegetates in uses of professor, tutor and secretary before being discovered a passion for engraving. It enters in training at Charles Nicolas Cochin, which employs it as clerk, and attends the workshop of Johann Georg Wille. Become portraitist, it éprend of the girl of a violin maker, whom he waters of poems during four years until its situation finally enables him to marry. In 1778, it is approved by the royal Académie of painting and sculpture, where it is allowed as a member in 1781. At the time of the Revolution, he pleads at the sides of Moreau the young person and Unstable-Guiard Adélaïde for the restoration of the statutes of this institution where the abuses any nature reign. “The laws of the State, declares it, are authorized by all French people, those of the Academy owe the being by all the people academician. ” But these reform projects are made null and void by the abolition of the Academies, issued by the Convention in 1795. Towards 1800, Miger is charged by Lacépède with engraving the boards of its work on the menagerie of the national Muséum of natural history. Miger carries out this important order according to the watercolours of Nicolas Maréchal. It then continues to handle the Burin and to compose of the worms until the age of almost 90 years.

In spite of the praises of the scientists, who could appreciate his talents, and in spite of a catalog comprising nearly 300 articles, its work of engraver hardly allured the amateurs of prints:

Honest man, good husband, good father, of soft manners, untiring worker, plus well-read man that the general information of his fellow-members, large rhymester of verses, yielding to the need with the soft mania worms Latin; moreover poor engraver, burinist poor and heavy, doing little honor with Cochin of which he was the pupil and the secretary, such was Miger, of the royal Academy of painting and the Company of the Children of Apollo.

The menagerie

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