Edme-François Gersaint was a Parisian marchand-mercier

Marchand-mercier

A marchand-mercier is a French term for a type of entrepreneur working outside the guild system of craftsmen but carefully constrained by the regulations of a corporation under rules codified in 1613.. The reduplicative term literally means a merchant of merchandise, but in the 18th century took...

who was a central figure in the development of the art market and the luxury trades during the era of the Régence

Régence

The Régence is the period in French history between 1715 and 1723, when King Louis XV was a minor and the land was governed by a Regent, Philippe d'Orléans, the nephew of Louis XIV of France....

 and the rule of the rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 style. His shadowy figure has always been connected with his caring friendship with the dying Antoine Watteau

Antoine Watteau

Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...

, which resulted in the familiar shop sign painted in 1720, conserved at Charlottenburg

Charlottenburg Palace

Charlottenburg Palace is the largest palace in Berlin, Germany, and the only royal residency in the city dating back to the time of the Hohenzollern family. It is located in the Charlottenburg district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf burough.The palace was built at the end of the 17th century...

, a masterpiece that provided publicity for Watteau as much as for Gersaint himself, but he had to wait until 2002 for his first in-depth biography. For his whole career, Gersaint presided from his cramped boutique

Boutique

A boutique is a small shopping outlet, especially one that specializes in elite and fashionable items such as clothing and jewelry. The word is French for "shop", via Latin from Greek ἀποθήκη , "storehouse"....

, hardly more than a permanent booth with a little back-shop, on the medieval Pont Notre-Dame

Pont Notre-Dame

The Pont Notre-Dame is a bridge that crosses the Seine in Paris, France linking the quai de Gesvres on the Rive Droite with the quai de la Corse on the Île de la Cité...

, in the heart of the heart of Paris, both creating and following fashion as he purveyed works of art and luxurious trifles to an aristocratic clientele, an artistic creator in his own way.

Gersaint was from a Burgundian merchant family recently settled in Paris. He began his career in 1718, purchasing the stock-in-trade and inheriting the clientele of a picture dealer on the Petit Pont

Petit Pont

The Petit Pont is a bridge crossing the River Seine in Paris, built in 1853, although a structure has crossed the river at this point since antiquity. The present bridge is a single stone arch linking the IVe arrondissement and the Île de la Cité, with the 5th arrondissement, between quai de...

, Antoine Dieu Au Grand Monarque, with a modest capital. Two inventories of his stock, taken in 1725 and 1750, revealed to his biographer, Guillaume Glorieux, the extent to which Gersaint's concerns had broadened, to concentrate as much on exotic novelties, oriental lacquer and porcelain, tea and coffee equipages, shells from tropical seas, as on the presentation of paintings, cleaned and stylishly framed, and mirrors, during decades when Paris regarded itself as the center of civilization.

Starting in 1733, Gersaint compiled catalogues for auction sales in Paris, notably the collections of Quentin de Losangère (2 March 1744), Antoine de la Roque (22 April 1745), and Angran, vicomte de Fonspertuis (17 December 1747); artists' biographies were appended to Gersaint's extended descriptions of their work. Gersaint's Catalogue raisonné de toutes les piėces qui forment l'oeuvre de Rembrandt (published posthumously, Paris, 1751), was the first catalogue raisonné

Catalogue raisonné

The typical catalogue raisonné is a monograph giving a comprehensive catalogue of artworks by an artist.The essential elements of a catalogue raisonné are that it purports to be an exhaustive list of works for a defined subject matter describing the works in a way so that they may be reliably...

of a single artist's graphic work, addressing at length the connoisseurship issues in distinguishing Rembrandt's work from that of his pupils in a chapter on doubtful attributions.