Clergé

Engraver
Clergé
(active c. 1842–1858)

Don Herbison-Evans
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Stella Crossley

Clergé was a highly prolific 19th-century French master steel plate engraver and scientific illustrator based in Paris. He created etched plates from drawings by artists such as Charles Émile Blanchard. Clergé's monochrome engraved plates were then printed in monochrome black or brown, at the F. Chardon Imprimerie nearby, who also had a line of colorists to hand-paint in watercolour the illustrations for richer patrons.

Clergé was a major plate-cutter working alongside Corbié for several of the foundational volumes of the Suites à Buffon atlases, and other natural history series, including

Histoire Naturelle des Insectes: Névroptères by Pierre Rambur,

Voyage en Abyssinie : exécuté pendant les années 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843 by Théophile Lefebvre,

Archives Entomologiques by James Livingston Thomson,

Voyage au Gabon: Histoire Naturelle des Insectes et des Arachnides (1856–1857) by Henry C. Deyrolle,

Histoire Naturelle des Insectes; Spécies Général des Lépidoptères by Jean Alphonse Boisduval & Achille Guenée.

Clergé and Corbié were employed by Boisduval & Guenée to engrave Blanchard's drawing in 1857 for late volumes in this latter publication. Previously, up to 1852, Boisduval & Guenée had employed Pierre Barrois to do the engravings for earlier volumes. But by 1857, Barrois was aged 69 and had retired.
Also for the later volumes: Boisduval & Guenée also switched from using the older printing presses at Narcisse Rémond to the more modern equipment at F. Chardon Imprimerie.

Copies of illustrations in this website engraved by Clergé for Guenée:-

Amblychia angeronaria	Androchela milvaria	Gastrina cristaria	Gastrinodes bitaeniaria
Melanodes anthracitaria

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(written 31 October 2026, updated 8 November 2026)