Vue de l'isle Barbe sur la Saone à une lieue de Lyon (View of Barbe Island on the Saône River, Lyon).

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736-1810) was a French draughtsman, etcher and engraver. Born in Lyon, he studied at the École Gratuite de Dessin in his home town, but was mostly self-taught. He began making prints in the period 1758–64, then went to Italy in the retinue of the ambassador Louis Alexandre, Duc de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville; he met Voltaire on his way, and returned with a collection of landscape drawings. Boissieu made several plates for the Diderot-d'Alembert Encyclopédie. He continued to produce prints in Lyon, which earned him a reputation as the last representative of the older etching tradition. Boissieu made many etchings of the Roman and countryside, as well as the countryside around Lyon, as in this print. 

This etching depicts Barbe Island on the River Saone and was published just two years before Boissieu's death. It reflects not only Boissieu's technical prowess but the obvious love of his locality. Everything is idyllic, perfect. The island boasts the obligatory, venerable, age old castle and church. The water is calm, yet there's enough breeze for sailing. Did it ever really look like that? Not really, but what matters is Boissieu's imagination and romantic feelings for 'the genius of the place'. Although it just precedes Romanticism as an art movement, it is evocative of his compatriot, Claude Lorrain, famous for his gorgeous, idyllic landscapes of the countryside around Rome, painted a century earlier.

See:  British Museum Collection online, 'Jean-Jacques de Boissieu' (biographical details), https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=131842