Louis Michel Halbou

Louis Michel Halbou (1730–1809) was a French draughtsman and engraver of the pre-Romantic period, specialising in burin.

Émile Bellier de La Chavignerie[2] states he was born in Paris in 1730 and calls him a "student [ie apprentice] of Nicolas-Gabriel Dupuis", whilst another source adds that he must have had quite a long apprenticeship since his art was "flourishing around 1760".

Halbou had some success engraving moral scenes after works by Jean-Michel Moreau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Johann Eleazar Schenau, with his prints sold by the "Veuve Chéreau", Marguerite-Geneviève Chiquet, who had opened a shop on rue Saint-Jacques under the sign of the Deux Piliers d'or.

Beraldi mentions a 1792 receipt for 1600 livres, a "considerable sum for the time", signed by the merchant Laurent for Halbou's engraving after Adriaen van der Werff's La Madeleine dans sa retraite (Mary Magdalene in the Desert).

[4] Halbou also contributed to several collections of illustrations and his work is also to be found in the Cabinet Basan (1771), published by Ruault (1785), the Didot jeune (1789) and the Musée français.