Charles Clément Balvay


Charles Clément Balvay, known as Bervic, was a French engraver mainly working in intaglio and exclusively in burin. Due to an error in transcribing the baptismal register, he is also now known as Jean Guillaume Balvay.
He served his first apprenticeship under Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, then left aged 14 for the studio of the engraver Jean-Georges Wille. When he was 18, he won first prize for drawing at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, of which he was elected a member in 1784. He became a member of the Académie des beaux-arts in 1803. He won many prizes and his drawing talents were particularly appreciated.
In 1809, Balvay was elected an associate member, fourth class, of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, predecessor to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Balvay married the painter Marie-Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond in 1788, but she died later that year. In 1791 he remarried to Marie-Madeleine Bligny, who died in 1795.

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