Nicolas de Launay (Delaunay), printmaker, part of a French family of printmakers. He trained with Louis-Simon Lempereur. His oeuvre includes portraits and also landscapes, for example two engravings of Roman ruins (1768) after Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, made for Jean-Georges Wille. As a book illustrator, de Launay contributed to some of the most famous books of the period, including the Métamorphoses d'Ovide (Paris, 1767-71); but he was best known for the amorous scenes that he engraved after such artists as Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, Niclas Lafrensen, Sigmund Freudenberger, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince and, most particularly, Jean-Honoré Fragonard. A number of de Launay's engravings of amorous scenes were framed in ovals, a format that almost became his signature. As well as imposing uniformity on series of loosely connected prints, it probably also reduced engraving time and cost. Six of de Launay's eight engravings after Fragonard are bordered in this manner; a notable exception is the Happy Hazards of the Swing, after The Swing (London, Wallace). His technique, which combined etching with engraving, produced a lightness that was especially suited to his subject-matter. //