Bernard Picart or Picard (1673 – 1733)
• Was a French draughtsman, engraver and book illustrator in Amsterdam.
• He was born in rue Saint-Jacques, Paris as son of Etienne Picart, a famous engraver.
• In 1689 he studied drawing and architecture at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.
• His teachers were Charles le Brun.
• He was also taught by Benoît Audran the Elder, Sébastien Leclerc and Antoine Coypel.
• In 1696 he spent a winter Antwerp, where he was well received.
• He stayed in Amsterdam for more than a year and had commissions before returning to France at the end of 1698.
• He took over his father's workshop.
• After his wife Cloudina Pros, the daughter of a bookseller, and children had died, he settled in the Hague together with Prosper Marchand in January 1710.
• There Picart, Marchand and Charles Levier belonged to a "radical Huguenot coterie", who studied the works of John Locke, who promoted separating church and state.
• They joined the Walloon church but were influenced by Jean Claude and Pierre Bayle who both fled to the Dutch Republic in earlier years.
• He and Marchand moved to Amsterdam in 1711 (later being joined by his father Étienne Picart (le Romain).
• In April 1712 he married Anna Vincent (1684-1736) assisted by her father, who initially disagreed with the marriage.
