Portraits from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Paris

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THE D R AWI N G CENTER

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Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris




The Drawing Center April 10 – June 28, 2015 Main Gallery


Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris

Curated by Brett Littman and Emmanuelle Brugerolles Organized in collaboration with École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris



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Foreword by Brett Littman and Nicolas Bourriaud Essay by Emmanuelle Brugerolles Ellen Altfest, Will Cotton, Alex Katz, and Brett Littman in Conversation


Foreword


Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris—a unique collaboration between the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and The Drawing Center in New York— explores the notion of drawn portraiture and provides alternative readings of this important genre of art making within a contemporary context. The exhibition is co-curated by Emmanuelle Brugerolles, General Heritage Curator of the school’s drawings collection, whose extensive knowledge of the medium and its history made this innovative show possible, and Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center. Featuring forty works from the Beaux-Arts’s prestigious collection, it explores four hundred years of portrait drawings, emphasizing work from live models. Each week, a different set of four portraits from different centuries and with different formal qualities will be hung “in dialogue” with one another within a specially-built room located in the center of The Drawing Center’s Main Gallery. The forty drawings were chosen according to wide-ranging criteria— “male” and “female” gestures, caricature, frontal gaze, the model’s social class, or profession. The room is inspired by the intimate gallery at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome, which houses Diego Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X (c. 1649). It only accommodates a small number of visitors at a time and was designed to provide a space for close viewing and contemplation. The remaining thirty-six portraits in the exhibition hang on the Main Gallery’s back wall and will be visible to viewers throughout the show’s run. The selection of

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works is extensive, ranging from never-before-exhibited drawings by nineteenth-century luminaries Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Charles Garnier to the work of modern and contemporary masters Henri Matisse and Georg Baselitz to portraits by recent graduates of the Beaux-Arts. The École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, located across the Seine from the Musée du Louvre in the heart of SaintGermain-des-Prés, is heir to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, founded in 1648 by Louis XIV. Its remarkable drawing collection is second in size only to that of the Louvre and, thanks to numerous gifts and donations for teaching purposes, includes a number of truly exceptional pieces. Historic, long-preserved state art collections and contemporary artistic creation come together in this institution, whose mission is to educate and train students planning to devote themselves to high-level artistic practice. The collections remain a vital component of teaching and study at the Beaux-Arts. For the students, who examine, draw from, and photograph them, they are a continual source of inspiration and reinterpretation. This exhibition would not have been possible without generous loans from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Galerie BUGADA & CARGNEL, and a private collection. We also greatly appreciate Nadège Giovannone, Claire Tabouret, and Stella Wauthier of Galerie BUGADA & CARGNEL for their help in facilitating the loan process.

The Drawing Center and the École nationale supérieure des BeauxArts de Paris both recognize their dedicated staff members for their commitment and enthusiasm in realizing this exhibition. From The Drawing Center, special thanks go to Jessica Man, Curatorial Assistant; Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Adjunct Assistant Curator; Joanna Ahlberg, Managing Editor; Peter J. Ahlberg, AHL&CO; Dan Gillespie, Operations Manager; Molly Gross, Communications Director; Margaret Sundell, Executive Editor; Alice Stryker, Development Manager; Olga Valle Tetkowski, Exhibition Manager; and Jeanine Herman, translator. From the Beaux-Arts, special thanks go to Kathy Alliou, Director of Scientific and Cultural Development; Monique Antilogus; Astrid Castres; Lucile Causse; Laurence

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Caylux; Sophie Chavanne; Emilie Couhadon; Christine Delaunoy; Marie-Paule Delnatte; Julien Fourrey; Maud Guichané; Hortense Longequeue; Maxime Préaud; Xavier Salmon; Antoine Tarantino; Hugues Villefroy de Silly; and, of course, Emmanuelle Brugerolles. Finally, we are incredibly appreciative of the steadfast support of The Drawing Center’s Board of Trustees and the funders who have championed this exhibition and its publication. Lead support comes from Canson and additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Robert Lehman Foundation, Ildeko and Gilbert Butler, Catherine and Arthur Williams, Diane Nixon, David Tobey, Elizabeth Eveillard, the Kress Family Foundation, and Jill Newhouse. —Brett Littman Executive Director, The Drawing Center —Nicolas Bourriaud Director, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris

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The Drawn Portrait: A Few Examples from the École des Beaux-Arts Collection Emmanuelle Brugerolles


Though numerous portrait drawings were created in the late-fifteenth century, there was no terminology associated with the genre. The verb portraire (to portray) could as easily mean to depict an object or a picturesque view as a face. The notion of a pourtraict (a portrait) rested above all on the idea of creating a likeness, a sketch, or even a copy of any number of subjects: figurative scenes, decorations, landscapes. The portrait as we know it today was designated by a range of vague terms: figure, ymaige, visaige, teste, effigie (face, image, visage, test, effigy). It was not until the early-seventeenth century in Italy and Spain and around the middle of the century in France that this specialty—the representation of the human visage— definitively appropriated the word. The Originality of French Portraits aux trois crayons

Nonetheless, from the Renaissance on, there was a specificity and originality to French portraiture that brought the school renown throughout Europe. During the years 1510–20, the portrait aux trois crayons—employing black, red, and white chalk—became a veritable genre unto itself, thanks in large measure to the Clouet family. First Jean and then François developed a type of portrait in which the model is seen as a bust and in three-quarters, the face impassive against a neutral background. Catherine de Medici’s passion for these works led to the emergence of collections formed in imitation of the Queen’s. The meticulous renderings of personalities at court limned by such artists as François Quesnel and Daniel and

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Pierre II Dumonstier [PLS. 1, 3] were so prized for their format and accomplishment that their patrons set them on a par with paintings. Many anecdotes confirm the role such portraits played in diplomacy, notably in the arrangement of royal weddings. In addition, these works were frequently copied—by their own makers, who created variations on their initial compositions, as well as by other draftsmen, working on behalf of art lovers seeking images of the French aristocracy. Copying became a common practice in the first half of the seventeenth century, when possessing an original by a great artist was considered less important than owning the likeness of a celebrity, such as the king, the queen, or the king’s official mistresses [PL. 6]. From the Series to the Individual Portrait

This phenomenon extended well into the seventeenth century (waning only with the emergence, and proliferation of, engraved portraits). During this period, we witness the creation of portrait galleries, initiated in the sixteenth century by the Italian scholar Paolo Giovio (1483–1552), which assembled paintings—often copies—and drawings. We know of a number, such as the Petite Galerie of the Louvre, created between 1602 and 1607; the Château de Selles gallery (in Loir-et-Cher), which was made at the request of Philippe de Béthune (1565–1649); and the Château de Beauregard gallery (in the Loire Valley), belonging to Paul Ardier (1563–1638). These examples find an echo in Henri Bellange’s “vast iconographical undertaking” (J. Tuillier, 2001): more than three hundred drawn portraits of historical figures, which would eventually adorn the office of a French or Lorraine art lover. Stored in albums and organized according to the professions of their (mostly male) sitters, these drawings were identical in technique and format, each bearing an inscription with the name of the model and his title and function [PL. 8]. Bellange typically selected men of State, the Church, or the Sword, and on occasion poets and scholars. Included are figures from all over Europe— Russia, Spain, England, and France—who lived between the fifth century and the end of the reign of Louis XII.

Over the course of the seventeenth century, the drawn portrait was gradually freed from these series, gaining a more independent status;

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artists began using the genre to explore the relationship between idealization and individuality, the artificial and the real. The court portrait was measured by a new standard that highlighted the careful distinction between ritrarre, which is to say, faithfully copying the real, and imitare, or correcting the real. Emblematic in this regard are the face studies by Ottavio Maria Leoni and Gian Lorenzo Bernini of the poet Zenot and the theoretician Agostino Mascardi, respectively [PLS. 2, 4]. Sketching from life (as opposed to from a pre-existing drawing or engraving), the artists render the physiognomy and expressiveness of the two men’s faces without compromising on their age or fatigued appearance. (This is particularly true in the likeness of Mascardi.) Working with a great economy of means and arrangement, interested only in their sitters’ expressive features, Leoni and Bernini eschew any staging or attributes linked to social status. The Golden Age of Portraiture in France

In the seventeenth century, the Académie des Beaux-Arts established a hierarchy of genres in which portraiture was considered minor. According to the preface to its 1667 lectures, the painter’s highest talent lay in his capacity to organize a speech. Nonetheless, Roger de Piles’s 1708 Cours de peinture par principes (The principles of painting) reminded that, “If painting be an imitation of nature, ’tis doubly so in a portrait; which not only represents a man in general, but such an one as may be distinguished from all others.” He underscored that it is not the “exactness of design in portraits, that gives spirit and true air, so much as the agreement of the parts at the very moment when the disposition and temperament of the sitter are to be hit off.” In closing, de Piles observed, “likeness being the essence of portraiture, it would seem that we ought to imitate defects as well as beauties, since by this means the imitation will be more complete.” The emphasis de Piles placed on the genre was accompanied by a significant rise in portrait commissions linked to the emergence of a bourgeoisie eager for social recognition at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. The rendering of Jules Hardouin-Mansart by Michel II Corneille [PL. 11] provides a good example of this evolution: the image’s theatrical mise-en-scène serves primarily to indicate and affirm the social status of the architect, then at the summit of his

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glory. Hyacinthe Rigaud [PL. 15] stood at the forefront of this trend, devising formulas to contextualize his sitters by way of specific attributes. His 1701 image of Louis XIV definitively set the typology of the official portrait. Rigaud, who ran his studio like a business, received numerous commissions not only from members of the court, but also from the haute bourgeoisie. François de Troy participated in the genre’s renewal with his storied portraits, such as Portrait de femme en Vénus désarmant l’Amour (Portrait of a woman as Venus, disarming Love) [PL. 13], which present sitters in the guise of mythological figures. The Proliferation of Eighteenth-Century Portraits

Starting in 1730, there was a surge in the number of portraits of worldly figures—celebrities, men of letters, influential women— exhibited at the Académie des Beaux-Arts’s Salon. The critic Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote of his impression of finding himself, “before an assembly of mad people, grotesquely attired, laughing in each other’s faces and mocking each other.” Uniform and inexpressive, these portraits reflected the canons of fashion and established a vocabulary and set of gestures to denote the importance and natural beauty of the individual. Louis Tocqué’s drawing of a painter, palette in hand [PL. 19]; Jean-Baptiste Oudry’s intractable magistrate, Voyer d’Argenson [PL. 18]; Alexandre-François Desportes’s depiction of a recently ennobled bourgeois hunting on his land [PL. 16] give a glimpse of this proliferation of portraits commissioned by an emergent upper class, which drew harsh commentary from some critics of the day, notably La Fond de Saint-Yenne. The Nineteenth Century’s New Approach

The work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres marks a significant shift in the drawn portrait, characterized by the freedom of the pose, the originality of the arrangement, the intensity of the psychological analysis, and, above all, the technique, in which graphite is used with the utmost finesse. During portions of his career, the artist was able to support himself entirely through this extraordinary production, by which we mean drawn portraits created for their own sake,

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intended for friends or for sale, not in preparation for paintings. In the portrait of Madame Leblanc [PL. 25]—the wife of the famous financier who lived in Florence during the painter’s stay there between 1820 and 1824—Ingres captures his sitter’s lively mind and the refined elegance of her personality. Emulators like Paul Flandrin strove, in such works as Portrait du peintre Signol [PL. 31], to reproduce his master’s lessons, notably his exploration of contours against a pure white ground. During the Second Empire, nineteenth-century portraitists developed an acute sense of societal critique through caricature. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, keenly devoted to the exercise, delivers an uncompromising image of a good parliamentary bourgeois, eminently pleased with his social condition—a short, somewhat portly man with a smug, satisfied smile [PL. 34]. Artist and architect Charles Garnier made caricatures throughout his career, from his early days as a lodger at the Villa Medici, the Académie des Beaux-Arts’s outpost in Rome to his election as a full member of that prestigious institution. His wife, Louise, carefully retained every sketch. She assembled in a single collection— almost like a modern-day photo album—a true gallery of the great political and cultural figures of his time [PLS. 32 and 33]. In many respects, Garnier’s incisive, ever-efficient line evokes the art of cartoonists in the press, whose talents would be expressed a few years later in satirical papers like Assiette au beurre (The butter plate). This panorama of the portrait through the centuries is possible thanks to the richness and diversity of the École des Beaux-Arts’s collection, one of the most prestigious in France. Assembled by artists and art lovers, it was created in the mid-nineteenth century for educational purposes, so that young students could learn about and be inspired by the art of their predecessors. Today, it is not only an important resource for students but also for art historians, who regularly come to consult it. We hope visitors to The Drawing Center in New York will see the originality and quality of these examples from the collection.

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Ellen Altfest, Will Cotton, Alex Katz, and Brett Littman in Conversation


brett littman: First of all, I want to thank you Alex, Ellen, and Will for participating in this conversation on portraiture. The exhibition that I’m curating and that we’re talking about today is drawn from the collection of the École nationale supérieure des BeauxArts de Paris. They have about 190,000 drawings in their collection that date back to about the sixteenth century and run into the twentyfirst century. When I started working with them on the show, I was primarily interested in finding some aspect of their collection to focus on and interpret in a contemporary way. Interestingly, portraiture is quite prevalent in their drawing collection. This is probably due to the fact that a Beaux-Arts education was traditionally grounded in drawing from life. I’ve always had difficulty with portraiture. I just don’t understand how to look at portraits and, therefore, don’t understand them. I felt it would be a good opportunity as a curator to focus on something that made me a little uncomfortable and use it as a way to better understand this genre of art making. Emmanuelle Brugerolles, who is the General Heritage Curator of the drawing collection at the École des Beaux-Arts, and I looked at about 150 portrait drawings from the sixteenth century to the mid-twentieth century and narrowed down the final selection to only forty works. The criteria that we used to select the works were:

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gender, class, profession, clothing and fashion, and hand gestures. We generally tried to pick portraits where the gaze was frontal. We also chose portraits that we believed were drawn from live models, not from prints or from paintings. To deal with these works and open up possible interpretive readings, I devised the following curatorial strategy: display four different portraits from different centuries each week in a small custom-built room in our Main Gallery. So, if you come to The Drawing Center on week two and you come on week four, you’re obviously going to see different things. Only maybe five or six people can fit in that room at any given time. I wanted to create a situation where there would be a dialogue among the works. The remaining thirty-six drawings will be hung in the back of the gallery, which you will see once you pass through the room. They will be hung in chronological order, not by any kind of thematic grouping. Viewers will have the opportunity to go ahead and look at all of the drawings and make their own conclusions. So now that I’ve laid the groundwork for the exhibition, I want to ask a couple of questions to set the tone. What, in your opinion, is the earliest portrait made in human history? will cotton: I would like to talk a little about that. I recently read that a portrait was found in a cave in Angoulême in Western France that dates back to 27000BC. ellen altfest: I feel like those palm prints on the walls at the Charvaux or Lascaux caves in France could also be considered portraits. wc: I’ve been thinking about that, too, but if you follow that line of reasoning, you get back to footprints and then you get into nonhuman primates. Where do you stop? Maybe you cannot just consider the trace or the mark of the person a portrait?

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ea: I just think that there’s an intention with the palm prints that there isn’t with the footprint. They were making something to look at, not something accidental. bl: My next question, then, is how to define what makes something a portrait? Between Will and Ellen we’ve already introduced two divergent concepts. wc: My broad definition of portraiture is that it is a recognizable representation of a specific person. To me, that definition might even include my driver’s license, which, incidentally, I think is a very complete portrait—in addition to having a photograph of me, it describes my height, eye color, date of birth, place of residence, etc. ea: I guess I think that anything that we do as artists has an element of self-portraiture. I guess it’s because— bl: Because of the intention? ea: Because of what it says about us, that we made it. alex katz: Rauschenberg said in a telegram, “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.” I hate to define things. bl: I don’t like to define things either, but here I am trying to do that. Let me try and complicate things again. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the portraits Eleanor Antin did of different people where it’s just a photo of the door to their apartment with some items like a milk carton and a newspaper outside. Could this be considered a portrait? As well, I’ve been thinking a lot about Francis Ponge. I don’t know if you know him; he was a French writer and philosopher who was nicknamed the “poet of things.” He wrote long prose pieces about soap, cigarettes, rain, shells. These are the most detailed emotional descriptions of objects that I’ve ever read, but you never actually know exactly what he’s describing

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unless you read the title. I wonder if Ponge’s prose works could be considered portraits? Do portraits have to be visual? wc: Well, Brett, we can take the example of the bookcase in your office. This may be an institutional thing, but I would consider that a portrait of you: it represents your interests, perhaps things you intend to read one day, have read, think are important enough to take up space on your shelf. bl: So, you would agree with me that it’s possible to make a portrait without a human in the frame? wc: Absolutely. bl: Ellen, I didn’t ask you, but do you consider your paintings of arms, legs, and backs portraiture? ea: No, I don’t consider my work portraiture. bl: Why? ea: I don’t want my paintings to be about the models. Portraits are about the person being painted, and that’s not what I’m interested in. bl: But in your paintings, there are surely psychological moods. Lighting and the placement of the body are important. I think, in the end, you do invest the sitter with some power. ea: I disagree. bl: Really? wc: Ellen—I’m also going to have to disagree with you about your own work. If what you’re saying was true, your sitters would be interchangeable. You could have one guy one day and just bring in another leg another day to finish it up.

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ea: Every part of the body has its own specificity, and representing that interests me, but the psychology of the person is absent, unless you believe the body part reveals the psychology of the person. Each painting has a psychology, but it’s not of a specific person. wc: You then make the assumption that psychology is automatically part of portraiture. ea: My paintings don’t broadcast the identity of the sitter easily. You can’t recognize the person unless you were… bl: Intimate with them? ea: Yes, exactly. bl: Or if you went to the beach with them and you saw that they had a kind of mark on their back and you noticed that in the painting. I want to read a passage from W.J.T. Mitchell’s book What Do Pictures Want? Consider the average portrait, standing in a portrait gallery with hundreds of others, waiting for someone to pay attention to it. Average portraits—that is, the conventional, official images of forgotten personages by forgotten painters—are the most forlorn figures of longing for recognition. No one cares about them except historians and specialists. Yet captured there on the canvas is the shadowy likeness of a once-living individual, one who probably regarded himself with some considerable self-esteem, an attitude validated by his ability to command a portrait to be made.1

So if I cannot empathize with the portrait or identify the person in the portrait—am I locked out of the image? wc: You have to find a way in. bl: Well if we don’t need psychology and recognition as a way in— maybe we don’t need to identify the sitter at all? 1

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W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 73.


Alex, your portraits are identifiable in some ways. They’re usually people we might know. Does that change the way you approach the portrait, if you know or don’t know the person? ak: Not at all. If someone’s interested in the light on the figure, it’s going to be different than someone who’s interested in giving you a real, three-dimensional account of the person. Some people want to tell you what they know about the person. Other people just want to show what he looks like. I’ve always felt that Titian’s portraits and Rembrandt’s portraits tell you too much about the person. I like Tintoretto’s portraits best because they don’t do that. They show you; they don’t tell you. It’s a very wide-open thing. I think the problem some people have with portraiture is what is it doing here in the twenty-first century? All art is subject to fashion. Fashion changes every three years. What’s happened in the last twenty years is that there’s been much more energy put into painting from photographs. These have a different look than paintings not made from photographs. I went to a modern art school ... wc: Alex, we’re both grads of Cooper Union ... ak: Yeah, but you didn’t have the same guy teaching you. My instructor was a hard-line modernist. He said, “In this class, we don’t use any chiaroscuro. We don’t use any modeling. We don’t use any aerial perspective. We don’t use any perspective at all. It is all line and plane, so reality and fashion exist in those terms.” That was a long time ago. bl: Alex, when you started to really paint portraits, there weren’t so many modernist painters that were interested in them. Maybe because portraiture was so out of fashion at that time? ak: It was completely out of fashion. Picasso and Matisse didn’t deal with specific information; they dealt with abstract terms. But for me the question was, “Is portraiture interesting or it isn’t?” Something

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that’s been done a lot of times isn’t very interesting. But when people started to paint from photographs, it was a new game. The modernist thing was just tossed on its ear by these painters looking at halftones. wc: Yes, but this “new game” started a long time ago in the 1830s and 1840s. ak: But at that time, it was a totally different look. wc: That’s true. ak: They used photographs in the 1860s, but they made them look like paintings. wc: They tried to, but when I look at paintings pre-1850 and then the academic paintings of the late-nineteenth century, I just see a very different kind of figure. I see a less interesting kind of rendering. ak: What happened, I think, was that Francis Bacon was the first guy who had a studio filled with photos and used photos that looked like photos. Then, in the 1960’s, Malcolm Morely started to make these paintings that were just like photographs. Morely’s paintings from that period had a lot of style and they looked new. ea: I have a question for you, Brett. You’re a good example of why people aren’t interested in portraiture now, because it makes you uncomfortable. What about it makes you uncomfortable? bl: I think it’s because it is a totally ubiquitous genre of art making. It’s everywhere. It’s something I’m confronted with every day. It’s in advertising. It’s in digital photos on the web. It actually is something that’s present all the time. I felt an imperative to address portraiture: when something bothers me, I have to go head on and look at the whole issue more closely—even if it makes me uncomfortable or it’s something I don’t like or understand. This is the only way for me to make some semblance of the situation. That said, I’m not claiming that this show is a scholarly exercise. I’m not an expert on portrait drawings. I’m not even an art historian, to be totally honest.

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ak: There’s a person on the street that does a portrait for a couple of dollars. They get a fairly good likeness, but probably not as good as I could achieve. The thing about a portrait is that it’s a vehicle for making art. In other words, a very good artist can do about five or six things at once in a portrait. An undeveloped artist does one thing. That’s what makes portraits different. A very good artist can take the form of a portrait and move it from something banal into something very fashionable. For example, most people reconstruct hands. They need to build the hands. Between each finger, a dull artist puts one dot. Raphael puts one dot in one and leaves the others open. It’s always a surprise where he puts the things. In a Raphael drawing, the marks are not monotonous. The marks are very open. The form is totally solid, but it has light on it. It can be emotion, too—with emotion, light, and interesting marks. A great Raphael drawing is really something you can look at for quite a while. It’s different than the guy on the street. He might not even get as good of a likeness as the guy on the street. bl: A lot of people say to me that portraiture is about verisimilitude. I totally disagree. I think it’s … ak: Forget about absolute likeness. Likeness is a matter of opinion. Just like size is a matter of opinion. Portraiture is basically a subjective affair. ea: That’s why that show Madame Cézanne at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is so amazing. ak: But Cézanne is very subjective in his work. ea: Exactly, you can’t even get a sense of what his wife Hortense really looks like. You could leave there, and she could be walking down the street, and you wouldn’t be able to pick her out. bl: It’s funny you mentioned that: we just walked through the show yesterday with Dita Amory, the curator, who is actually one of our long-term board members. One of the points that she wants to make

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with the exhibition is that Cézanne used his portraits of Hortence primarily as a method and process to work out painting problems. That’s her thesis for the show. It’s kind of fascinating, because she’s hung it in a non-chronological way. I agree with you that if I bumped into Hortanse on the street, I would have no idea who she was. One thing I did take away from looking at the portraits, though, is that her facial expressions are dour most of the time. It looks like it was an unpleasant situation for her. For me, it really dispelled the notion that portrait painters beautify their models. ak: Well, again, portraits are subject to changing fashions. Look at Sir Thomas Lawrence’s 1790 painting of Elizabeth Farren, the Countess of Derby, at The Met. That’s got to be the flashiest painting in all of Europe at the time. Francisco Goya and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres were trying to make something that flashy, but they couldn’t come close. The Lawrence portrait is very thin. There’s no real architectural substance to the figure or anything else in the painting. There’s a wonderful rhythm to the brushstrokes. It’s great surface. ea: An issue I have with portraits is that the face sometimes gets in the way. Your eye automatically goes to the face, so it becomes dominant. I like when paintings read as a whole. Obviously, Alex, I think your paintings take the face into consideration as a part of the whole composition, but in the way I paint, which is very specific and hyperobserved, it would be hard to achieve the balance I look for. In a lot of contemporary art, I’ve noticed people struggling with the face or leaving it out. The face becomes this hugely problematic thing, because then the whole painting is no longer unified. ak: The face of a person makes a lot of problems. It makes a lot of problems for painters. bl: Will, you’ve been pretty committed to the face. I’ve seen a lot of your work where you’re doing the upper torso and have really tightly focused on the face. wc: Now I’m going to be the one to say, “Those are not portraits.”

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They refer to the history of portraiture. They refer to the works you’ve chosen for your exhibition and works in the galleries in the Louvre and the Uffizi. And, like you described it, I also wonder who these people are and why I should care. One thing I noticed over the years is the symbolic, hierarchical attributes that different portraits have and I thought, “Well, let me just change that game all around.” When I have a sitter come in for a portrait, I see them as an actor. I don’t really care at all what their childhood was like psychologically or where they stand in the socioeconomic spectrum. In many cases, I don’t even speak to them. It’s more about me being a director and saying, “Okay. You’ve come into my studio, and now I will cast you in a completely different narrative.” ea: I could see that in your work, actually. wc: But that discussion is more about my painted portraits, as opposed to my long-standing commitment to regularly hiring a model and drawing the figure in my studio. In general, I don’t show these drawings. It doesn’t matter to me if they’re successful as works of art. What I’m after is primarily experiential. It’s me, it’s drawing material, a piece of paper, a girl or a boy, and some light. What I’m looking for in these drawings is something that excites me. It might be the way the light hits the tip of her nose or how her hand is compressing her own flesh where it meets her hip. Just like you, Brett, going through a portrait gallery and needing to find a way in. For many people, it’s subject matter. In the case of portraiture, when you don’t know or care about the sitter, it can’t be, which brings you to the need to develop if not an intellectual than an aesthetic appreciation: “This portrait is more interesting to me because I love the way this mark is made. This portrait is less interesting to me because I hate the color of ink wash the artist used.” bl: Ellen, do you sketch? ea: Yes, I do. When I think about drawings, I think it’s the most direct thing you can possibly do: it’s just the pencil and the paper and the model. I’m hugely invested in working from life; I get

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something from responding to what’s in front of me that I don’t get when working from a secondary source. bl: Do you think that when you make a portrait, you need to focus and sustain your gaze on the subject for a long period of time? ak: No, not necessarily. I think … bl: I’m sorry, I don’t want to interrupt you, but do you think that making a still life takes as long as making a portrait? ak: You have to spend more time on a still life, generally speaking. With a portrait, if you have the person in motion, talking and moving, it’s like an impression on top of an impression. It ends up being one thing. If you make the person static, then it’s like a still life. There’s no life in the face. If you look at a lot of portraits, the reason they’re so dull is that the people are bored out of their minds, sitting there still looking forward—I’m sure that they would rather be someplace else. bl: Yes, a lot of people describe sitting for portraits in terms related to dying. ak: Another facet of the intellectual part of portraiture is that for a portrait to be any good, it has to be able to become an image that can be generalized. In other words—a portrait of my wife Ada becomes a portrait of a pretty girl or a portrait of a housewife or a portrait of beauty. It goes on and on. It relates to other things. It’s not local. But for me, Lucian Freud’s paintings are local. They refer mostly to themselves. It’s a great vehicle for passion, but they don’t move out as symbols at all. But with Andy Warhol, his portraits were general and universal and were easy to assimilate because they looked like modern art. bl: Do you think a lot of younger painters are making portraits today? I don’t.

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wc: Brett, I think you’re wrong. There are a lot of portraits being done, including many that you will never see by very well-known artists. ak: I also think that there are a lot of portraits being done. bl: Why do you think that? ak: They’re popping up in those Lower East Side galleries in New York. bl: I see some of them there, but I wouldn’t say that there’s a groundswell of portraiture in those galleries. When I go into those galleries—I see a lot of abstract work, Alex. ak: There are a lot of young artists that are doing things with portraits, particularly in an expressionistic vein. bl: Will, can I just come back to what you were saying? You feel that there are a lot of artists who are doing portraits, but we aren’t seeing them. Are they not part of the art market? wc: I think that’s a separate issue actually. I’m not going to name names, but many of the well-known painters out there do portrait commissions. Artists that you would not think of as portrait artists are making them, but the pieces go right into the collectors’ homes. They’re very likely never to go to auction, because they’re portraits. All of those Warhol portraits are just beginning to take off now that a lot of those people are dead, so the works are entering the market. In other words, you don’t know these portraits are being made, but they are. It’s kind of a shame. I’d like to see more of them. ea: Brett, I agree more with you that portraits aren’t accepted on the whole. There are exceptions, but I think that people are suspicious because portraiture is such a traditional thing. Anything that seems really traditional is seen as retrograde. It’s also seen as commercial in a way that’s unpalatable, I think.

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bl: I don’t want to make any sweeping generalizations, but maybe the reason that portraits are not in fashion right now is due to the fact that process-oriented abstraction is fairly easy to explain. I used a spray gun. I sprayed the painting. I’ve stepped on it. I rode my motorcycle over it. This is the image that you get. It’s quite flat in terms of its idea and also flat in terms of the way that you receive it. ea: Maybe portraits are just very subtle. There can be information or a feeling in portraits that you don’t get, unless you’re open or tuned-in to it. When you’re working from observation, there is energy between you and the thing or the person you’re looking at that is translated through you and comes out onto the paper or canvas. The sensibility is there, but in an indirect way. Some people cannot believe in something that is intangible. They just see it in terms of the fact of the genre, like, “Oh, this is a portrait. This is a still life.” That kind of identification is where they stop and, then, they’re not satisfied, because for them it’s something they’ve seen before. bl: There might be even another issue, though, related to the idea of the truthfulness of images. Not that I believe in absolute truth, but when I look at an image of a person, I know it’s mediated and manipulated by the artist. I guess I’m a little bit of a skeptic. wc: Certainly it is. So what? ak: No truth, no life-size. bl: No truth, no life-size. No 1:1 ratios? ak: No 1:1 ratios. ea: What does that mean? I think of my paintings as life-size. ak: If you measure a person, all of a sudden they’re in a casket. They don’t emanate energy. Energy changes what something looks like. Think of Giacometti sculptures—they’re the right size when you’re looking at the person in the distance. Also, think about

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the movie screen—we see twenty-foot or forty-foot heads all the time. Your mind makes those images life size. In your life, you’ve scaled it. You scaled it down. Early on, I realized there is no lifesize. Things and people have proximity or distance from you and the energy they emanate. In the end, what we understand as lifesize is the energy that emanates from the person or object. So there is no 1:1 ratio. You have no life-size. You have no absolute reality. Reality is a matter of opinion. It has to do with who’s strongest. The strongest person pushes his opinion down your throat. bl: Well maybe then the history of portraiture is tied to power. It’s about who am I going to look at—who had the strongest energy. ak: You’re missing the whole boat. bl: Alex, I want to get on the boat! ak: It boils down to this: basically, I’ve got to convince you that this painting is something interesting to look at. If it’s not interesting to look at, it’s boring. It’s as simple as that. wc: True of landscape, true of still life, true of abstract painting. I’m going to get a little specific in terms of finding a way into portraiture for Brett. Say, for example, you’re walking through the recent Alice Neel show at David Zwirner Gallery and didn’t know any of her subjects. I surely didn’t know any of those people personally, but I understood the archetype. In her work, she made me think, “Ah yeah, that guy is a type of person that I know.” For me, it took my interpretation outside of my own specific reaction to portraiture—even though they were straight-on portraits, nothing more, nothing less. bl: I based my exhibition layout on the Velázquez room with the painting of Pope Innocent X at the Doria Pamphilj in Rome. I really love this room with one painting. I love looking at Velázquez’s portraits because there I find richness in the painting in terms of information. I don’t need to know who Pope Innocent X was. I don’t even need to understand the history. I can look at that painting for many, many

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hours. I’m not saying that I’m totally averse to portraiture but through this exhibition, I’m trying to understand, “What does a drawn portrait mean?” I’m asking a question, but I do want to make it clear that I’m not against portraiture in any way, shape, or form. That’s not my position. I’m not saying that no one should do it. ak: Again, I would tell you a good portrait is just something interesting to look at. bl: Alex, in some ways, I think that my selection came down to what was interesting to look at. ak: If you apply the standards of antique drawing to a lot of these drawings, they’re just garbage. They’re just total garbage. They don’t fulfill the standards of antique drawing. But they can be very interesting to look at. That’s what’s more important. The standards of drawings aren’t important. They’re important to the artist to learn something … they’re applicable to some things. But to other things, they’re not applicable. If you talk about artists like Vincent Van Gogh, he does very nice portraits. They’re great images. You take a Van Gogh drawing … there’s some drawings he did in southern France of some buildings— you can almost feel the heat in the drawing. wc: And you can hear the cicadas in the drawing, too … ak: You can feel the temperature of the day. No other artist ever did that for me. With Van Gogh, you know if it was a sunny day or a damp day. I feel that’s totally incredible. The subject matter is a bunch of houses. What was important to him was what drawing could offer him in terms of describing the energy of the world.

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Catalogue of Exhibited Works

by Emmanuelle Brugerolles with Kathy Alliou, Astrid Castres, Lucile Causse, Maud GuichanĂŠ, Hortense Longequeue, Delphine Peresan-Roudil, Estelle Pieragnolo, Anna Trapero, and Hugues Villefroy de Silly Translated from the French by Jeanine Herman

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PL . 1

Daniel Dumonstier (b. Paris, 1574 – d. Paris, 1646) Portrait d’ homme (Portrait of a man) Black and red chalk on paper 310 x 220 mm Inv. no. EBA 880 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance: marked G. C., at bottom right (unknown by F. Lugt); Alfred Armand; Prosper Valton; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1908, marked EBA bottom left (L. 829) Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 1984, p. 235, no. 317; C. Frontisi, 2001, p. 211; D. Lecœur, 2006, p. 202, no. R1

During the second half of the sixteenth century, the drawn portrait enjoyed considerable success with the Clouet dynasty, in large part due to the passion of Catherine de Medici (wife of Henry II). Successive generations of two artistic families, the Quesnels and the Dumonstiers, made particularly careful portraits—mainly for members of court—which were considered equal to paintings by those commissioning them. The phenomenon extended into the seventeenth century and did not weaken until the 1620s, a period when the fashion turned toward engraved portraits. Daniel Dumonstier is the last representative of this genre that becomes outmoded but the success of which cannot be denied. The École des Beaux-Arts drawing is notable for the simplicity of its arrangement and the soberness of its technique. The use of red chalk remains discreet, and the clothes are treated in summary fashion, with a certain abruptness, while the hair, beard, and eyebrows are finely detailed. The draftsman’s work focuses mainly on the face and the search for a spontaneous expression. The model’s outfit and above all his hairstyle (cut very short and brushed back) and fine moustache, allow us to date the work to the 1590s. But contrary to common practice at the time, there is no indication—either the name of the model or the date—that would allow us to determine the identity of the sitter, whose intense gaze gives him real presence. E.B. and L.C.

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PL . 2

Ottavio Maria Leoni (b. Rome, 1578 – d. Rome, 1630) Portrait dit de Zenot (Portrait said to be of Zenot) Black and white chalk on paper 209 x 152 mm Inv. no. Mas.2337 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: top right, in black chalk: ZENOT/poete Italien (ZENOT/Italian poet) Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1925, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829a)

A contemporary of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Ottavio Maria Leoni was one of the most famous Roman portraitists during the first half of the seventeenth century. He worked in the service of four successive popes and their families (nephews or relatives by marriage) as well as the cardinals of the Sacred College. A protégé of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, Leoni’s career spanned more than thirty years; he depicted not only members of the Roman aristocracy and illustrious foreign visitors, but also more modest figures such as merchants and craftsmen. Artists, scholars, scientists, jurists, and prelates were among his favorite subjects. Leoni created hundreds of sketched faces drawn from live models. Some were preparatory drawings for paintings or prints; others, autonomous works meant to attract commissions from his clientele. Executed with great spontaneity and rendered on blue paper in black chalk highlighted by white chalk, these images depict the faces of their sitters with a great sense of truth. The work under consideration here can be linked to a series of sixtyseven drawings of prelates that served as the basis for the engravings in the Effigies cardinalium nunc viventium, published in Rome in 1608. Unconcerned with ceremony or setting, the artist creates a very realistic portrait of this figure of the Vatican court, remarkable in its expressivity and refinement. Although Leoni provided many of the studies for the Effigies, this drawing was not selected for engraving, which makes identification of the model difficult. A later annotation in the upper right-hand corner of the work, which refers to an Italian poet by the name of Zenot, does not provide a reliable identification. E.B. and A.T.

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PL . 3

Pierre II Dumonstier (attributed to) (b. Paris, c. 1582 – d. Paris, 1656) Portrait de femme en buste vue de trois-quarts (Bust of a woman in three-quarter view) Black and red chalk, and smudging on paper 180 x 121 mm Inv. no. Mas.1410 (Anonymous) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: verso, in ink: 1410 Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1925, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829a)

Captured in an almost frontal pose, her face turned slightly to the left, this unidentified young woman likely belonged to the middle class. Her exceedingly sober outfit seems to designate her as a widow, particularly her headdress, called an attifet, which was usually worn during widowhood or bereavement. This little cap, which covers the back of the head and adorns part of the forehead with a slightly rounded band at its tip, was made fashionable by King Henry II’s wife, Catherine de Medici, but was worn mostly by Marie de Medici, widow of King Henry IV. The model’s coiffure—her hair is pulled back, crimped, and swept to the top of the head—allows us to date this portrait to the 1610s. Her simple outfit features a gray pinafore. It opens in a V-shape over a white blouse with a high, square collar, which is turned up behind the neck. The expression of the face with its austere and melancholic serenity is reinforced by the total absence of jewelry that might distract the eye. The making of the drawing, especially the smudging of the shadows and the very linear treatment of the bangs, allow us to attribute the work to the studio of Pierre II Dumonstier, active in Paris in 1611 and mentioned as a painter and a valet in the King’s chamber in 1618. E.B. and L.C.

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PL . 4

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (b. Naples, 1598 – d. Rome, 1680) Portrait d’Agostino Mascardi (Portrait of Agostino Mascardi) Black, red, and white chalk on paper 262 x 192 mm Inv. no. EBA 435 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: verso, in pen and brown ink: Augustius Mascardius/aeques, L. Berninus/ delineauit; verso, in graphite: Blanc Provenance : Alfred Armand; Prosper Valton; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1908, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829a) Bibliogr aphy: F. Haskell and S. Rinehart, 1960, pp. 318–26; J. Bean and F. Stampfle, 1967, vol. II, p. 53, no. 69; W. Vitzthum, 1971, p. 85; C. T. Eisler, 1975, p. 30, pl. 10; V. Martinelli, 1981, no. XVI; A. Sutherland Harris, 1982, p. 392; E. Brugerolles, 1984, p. 67, no. 16; A. Angelini, 1998, p. 64; A. Angelini, 1999, p. 22; M. Delbeke, E. Levy, and S. F. Ostrow, 2006, p. 278; A. Rivoallan, 2013, vol. I, pp. 357–58, vol. II, fig. 91 Exhibitions: Paris, Los Angeles, and Hamburg, École des Beaux-Arts, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1981–82, no. 9

An architect and sculptor as well as a painter, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (known in France as Le Bernin) is one of the most brilliant figures of seventeenth-century Roman Baroque art. An esteemed portraitist, he excelled both in stone—as evidenced by his famous sculpted bust of Cardinal Scipion Borghese (1632, Borghese Gallery, Rome)—and on paper. During the 1630s, Bernini drew a series of portraits of the leading intellectuals of the day aux trois crayons, skillfully combining red, black, and white chalk. His rendering of Genoan theoretician Agostino Mascardi can be identified with ease by the model’s facial features. Enjoying the favor and support of the Barberini family, Mascardi belonged to the major intellectual and artistic circles that developed in Rome from 1620 to 1630. Returning to Rome from his native Genoa in 1623—following the papal election of Maffeo Barberini—Mascardi took on prestigious positions in Roman academies, notably at the Desiosi theater company and the Umoristi. He also served as chair of rhetoric at Sapienza, University of Rome, from 1628 to 1638. Bernini’s fine hatching models the face of his sitter, who—captured in a dynamic pose, his shoulders seen slightly from the side—turns an intelligent and clear gaze toward the viewer. The draftsman neglects no detail of the face, and one can read fatigue and age in the hollow cheeks and wrinkled brow. Although not a preparatory sketch, this drawing may be seen in relation to Bernini’s painted

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portrait of Mascardi mentioned in the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo (F. Haskell and S. Rinehart, 1960). E.B. and M.G.

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PL . 5

Guido Ubaldo Abbatini (after) (b. Città di Castello, Italy, 1600 – d. Rome, 1656) Portrait du cardinal Orazio Giustiniani (Portrait of Cardinal Orazio Giustiniani) 18th century copy Black and red chalk on paper 310 x 196 mm Inv. no. PM 2185 (Henri Beaubrun) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: verso, bottom left: Beaubrun l’ainé (Beaubrun the elder) Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked bottom right (L.3561); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1987, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829)

This black-chalk drawing is a copy after a work by the Italian painter Guido Ubaldo Abbatini (F. Petrucci, 2008), which was previously misattributed to Henri II Beaubrun, a portraitist from Ambroise in the service of Henri IV. It depicts Cardinal Orazio Giustiniani, a native of the island of Chios then under the rule of the Republic of Genoa. Due, in part, to his mastery of Greek, Giustiniani was instrumental in the rapprochement between the Roman and Orthodox churches. A cardinal under the pontificate of Innocent X, he served as librarian to the pope. Abbatini, a portraitist and historical painter in Rome, was involved in various religious commissions under the pontificate of Urban VIII and made many portraits, notably those of Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII. Dated 1645, the year Giustiniani was appointed cardinal, Abbatini’s rendering is strongly influenced by the art of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in terms of color and the placement of the model, caught in the midst of his official duties. Abbatini participated in several projects for Giustiniani designing the interiors of chapels, earning him the nickname “slave in chains” from Passeri. After the cardinal’s death in 1649, Sébastien Vuillemont produced an engraving based on Abbatini’s portrait that isolates Giustiniani’s bust. Conceived for the Galleria Giustiniana, a vast work commissioned around 1631 to illustrate Giustiniani’s prestigious collection of antiques, Vuillemont’s etching was not distributed separately (S. D. Squarzina, 2003) and very few copies exist today. We know of one in a private collection and a second at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. It is this engraved reproduction that our copyist used to execute his drawing, taking care to restore the effects of shadow provided by the lines of the graver through smudging. The technique of black chalk and smudging as well as the type of paper used allow us to date this work from the eighteenth century. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 6

Anonymous (French) (c. 1600) Portrait de jeune femme à mi-corps, la tête de trois-quarts (Portrait of a young woman, half-length, three-quarter view) Black, red, and assorted colored chalk on paper 420 x 287 mm Inv. no. Mas.1406 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1925, marked bottom left (L. 829a)

This brightly colored portrait presents an important figure in the court of France during the reign of Henri IV. The sitter’s status can be discerned by her jewelry, the luxury of her clothing and hairstyle, and the bold, confident expression in her eyes. While it is difficult to identify the model with precision, based on the costume, this drawing can be dated to between 1580 and 1610. Bal à la cour d’Henri IV (Ball at the court of Henri IV), painted circa 1610 by Louis de Caullery and now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, depicts women whose silhouettes in very fitted garments are similar to the outfit here: the sitter wears a rigid bodice embellished with padded sleeves from shoulder to elbow; her skirt is wrapped around a very narrow waist thanks to the drum-shaped farthingale (a hoop like a spare tire, placed under the skirt, around the hips); and her face is enhanced by a large, stiff ruff trimmed with lace, sometimes called a Medici collar. Like many of the figures painted by Caullery, the young woman is wearing a high hairstyle, achieved by crimping her slightly wavy hair and gathering it in a bun at the back of her head. A yellow ribbon with eight knots decorates the upper portion of her hairdo like a tiara, while a flower of the same color adorns the dark bodice and serves as a clasp for a chain of pearls, which descends to the waist. The use of broad strokes of the drawing, particularly visible in the costume, suggests the work of a copyist from a painted, drawn, or engraved model, perhaps within the framework of a series. With the success of galleries of illustrious personalities during the first half of the seventeenth century, the creation of such copies became a common practice. Here, the value lay not in possessing an original work by a great artist but an effigy of a celebrity. The face of this model resembles Gabrielle d’Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and mistress of Henri IV from 1591 to 1599. (See the engraved portrait of her by Thomas de Leu or the drawn portraits by Daniel Dumonstier, François Quesnel, and Benjamin Foulon, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.) The visage also recalls Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, Marquise of Verneuil, who enjoyed Henri IV’s

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favors from from 1599 to 1609 (Versailles, châteaux de Versailles et Trianon, Inv. no. MV 5500). This difficulty in identification is explained by a sort of standardization of appearances in court portraiture that occurred during the time of Henri IV, in particular for the king’s mistresses. E.B. and L.C.

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PL . 7

Daniel de Blieck (b. Middelburg, Netherlands, c. 1610–20 – d. Middelburg, Netherlands, 1673) Portrait de Caspar Alenzoon (Portrait of Caspar Alenzoon) Graphite and black chalk on vellum 139 x 105 mm Inv. no. Mas.1533 (L.43) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: top right, in pencil: A° 1649/out 46 Jaer 3/12 Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA bottom right (L 829a) Bibliogr aphy: F. Lugt, 1950, no. 43

In 1648, artist and architect Daniel de Blieck became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Middelburg, which he never left except for a trip to England around 1657. While his biography remains little known, Blieck’s renderings of church interiors are well documented. He also made a few portraits, including this one from the École des Beaux-Arts. This drawing is similar to a series of portraits dedicated to the pastors of the city of Middelburg, a city around 1649—at approximately the same moment as Bartholomeus Hopffer’s suite of pastors from Augsburg (see PL. 9). Some of the works in Blieck’s series are based on engravings or drawings, especially when the clergymen being depicted were long dead. The model here, identified by an inscription on the back as Caspar Alenzoon, was forty-six years old when Blieck portrayed him. He is shown from the waist up in a halflength portrait. Alenzoon’s head is bare and he is dressed in a very sober outfit: he wears a dark coat fastened by many buttons and is further wrapped in a cloak. These sartorial elements suggest, as Frits Lugt did in 1950, that Alenzoon was a member of the family of the Mennonite preacher Hans Alenson, who died in 1644. Showing an aspect of the artist’s work that is less common, this drawing’s somewhat stiff facture contrasts with the more lively style of Blieck’s interiors as well as his other portraits, particularly the Portrait d’ homme (Portrait of a man) at The Art Institute of Chicago (Inv. no. 1923.992). E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 8

Henri Bellange (b. Nancy, France, 1613 – d. Paris, 1672–80) Portrait de l’avocat général Sornig (Portrait of Advocate General Sornig) Black and red chalk and graphite on vellum 130 x 109 mm Inv. no. PM 2768 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: bottom left, in graphite: bellange f.; in pen and brown ink, highlighted with gold: LAVOCAT. GENRRAL. SORNIG (Advocate. General. Sornig) Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked bottom right (L. 2561); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1987, marked EBA bottom left (L. 829a)

Long attributed to Thierry Bellange, this work is part of a series of drawn portraits now definitively credited to the painter Henri Bellange, who was the eldest son of the famous Jacques Bellange (P. Choné, 1990) and a student of Claude Deruet. After an extended sojourn in Italy from 1633 to 1643, Henri Bellange entered into the service of the Duke of Lorraine and later settled in Paris. His drawn works, often signed, are characterized by the use of graphite and/or black and red chalk, at times with some additions of pastel. A “vast undertaking of iconography” (J. Tuillier, 2001), the series of which this drawing is part comprises some three hundred portraits of historical figures. It belongs to a particular genre developed in the seventeenth century in tandem with the creation of “galleries of the illustrious.” Mostly male, the models chosen by Henri Bellange were usually statesmen, clergymen, or military men, more rarely poets or scholars. The inscription at the bottom of the sheet indicates the profession of the model, of whom no trace remains in the archives. Pleading cases at the Parliament of Paris or at one of the thirteen other local Parliaments built in France in the fifteenth century, the advocates general of the Ancien Régime intervened in affairs concerning “the King, the Public, the Church, Communuties, and Minors” (Diderot and d’Alembert, 1751). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some, famous for their eloquence, were the subject of engraved portraits, along with the great political, literary, and scientific figures of the time, as evidenced by the portrait of Jean-Etienne de Thomassin by Ludovicus Finsonius (Versailles, Musée du Château, Inv. no. LP16.90.1) and the portrait of Louis Servin by Thomas de Leu (BnF, Inv. no. RESERVE FOL-QB-201 [24]).

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Portrayed from the front, his head swiveling slightly to the right, the Advocate General Sornig wears the red coat with puffed sleeves typical of French magistrates at the end of the sixteenth century. Underneath, we see a black, buttoned doublet with a wide, turned-up collar and a shirt with the stiff, square collar that was particularly fashionable in the 1630s. E.B. and L.C.

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PL . 9

Bartholomaeus Hopffer the Younger (b. Augsbourg, Germany, 1628 – d. Strasbourg, Germany, 1699) Portrait de Christoff Ehinger d’Augsbourg, pasteur (Portrait of Christoff Ehinger of Augsbourg, Pastor) Pen, black ink, and wash of India ink on paper 243 x 200 mm Inv. no. Mas.99 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: upper right, in pen and black ink: B. Hopffer f. 1655 Provenance : J. Masson, marked lower left (L.1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA lower right (L. 829a) Bibliogr aphy: R. Ekkart, 1973, pp. 180–92

Trained in Amsterdam in the workshop of Govaert Flinck, the portraitist Bartholomaeus Hopffer initially settled in Augsburg and then relocated to Strasbourg around 1656. Shortly before his departure, Hopffer executed the most prestigious work of his career: a series of fourteen portraits of the pastors of Augsburg. (Bartholomaeus Kilian’s engravings after the series dates from 1656.) He likely obtained the important commission thanks to his uncle, the pastor Thomas Hopffer, whose portrait he painted a few years before for the evangelical church Heilig-Kreuz. Nine of Hopffer’s preparatory drawings for Kilian’s fourteen etchings have been preserved, including this one from the École des BeauxArts of Christoff Ehinger (as indicated by the engraving caption). Dating to circa 1655, all were limned in black chalk with a wash of India ink and, sometimes, white gouache. Represented here at the age of forty-seven, having worked as a pastor at Ausbourg’s church of Saint-Esprit for twenty-four years, Ehinger appears in an arrangement that is very similar to the other portraits in the engraved series: frontal, slightly turned to the right, he is dressed in the ample black robe of the pastor, with a large ruff. Slightly to the left, his hands are visible and hold a Bible. The engraver remained faithful to the drawing, while accentuating the effects of shadow and light, as well as certain details, such as the Bible’s binding. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 10

Jacob Ferdinand Voet (b. Antwerp, 1639 – d. Paris, 1700) Portrait de femme vue de face (Portrait of a woman, frontal view) Pastel on paper 225 x 160 mm Inv. no. PM 1779 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: lower left, in pen and black ink: CO 53/luglio/1675 (CO 53/July/1675) Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked lower right (L. 2561); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1987, marked EBA lower left (L. 829a)

A painter of Flemish origin, Jacob Ferdinand Voet specialized in the genre of portraiture; his work met with great success during his stay in Rome, between 1670 and 1680, as well as the time he spent in Milan, Florence, and Turin. Present at the court of France in 1686, he distinguished himself by making portraits of the four nieces of Cardinal Mazarin. The École des Beaux-Arts has a large collection of portraits drawn by Voet associated with his Belle Donne (Beautiful women) series of female models. The suite, comprising thirty-seven paintings of “Roman beauties,” was created at the request of Cardinal Flavio Chigi for the gallery of his Casino alle Quattro Fontane in Rome between 1672 and 1678. It is now held at the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia. Because of an apocryphal inscription on the mounting, this young woman was long misidentified as Ortensia Biscia del Drago (known from two painted portraits, at the Palazzo Chigi in Arricia and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes). Voet’s unknown sitter is similar to Cardinal Chigi’s Belle Donne—the subjects of similar drawings made circa 1674–75. The model appears in bust, from the front, coiffed with two braids following the Roman fashion of the time, wearing a lavish dress with a wide, lace neckline. The frontal effect of the arrangement is reinforced by the rigid pose of the torso, whereas the doll-like face contrasts with the sad mouth and dull eyes. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 11

Michel II Corneille (b. Paris, 1642 – d. Paris, 1708) Portrait de l’architecte Jules Hardouin-Mansart (Portrait of the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart) Red chalk, pen, brown ink and ink wash, and white gouache highlights on paper (paper patched and pasted by the artist) 163 x 108 mm Inv. no. Mas.1007 (Largillière) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829a) Bibliogr aphy: A. Gady, 2010, p. 202, no. 47 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1927, no. 248; Toulouse and Nantes, Musée des Augustins and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 1997–98, no. 7

Set in his study, where a view of a garden can be seen to the left, the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart is seated in a lavishly carved armchair. With his right hand, he indicates plans for a building he has just projected, having abandoned his compass and blueprint on the ground, where they lie next to a plaster bust. In addition to his plans, a smaller version of François Girardon’s famous Enlèvement de Proserpine (Rape of Prosperine) sits on the claw-foot table by his side. The walls of the study are covered in framed works. This theatrical mise-en-scène serves primarily to indicate the social status of the architect—then at the height of his glory—who was not only soughtafter for many commissions, but was also a discerning collector. The careers of the draftsman and the architect were entwined on numerous occasions: famous for his décors, Michel II Corneille and his brother Jean-Baptiste painted a scene of Junon priant Éole de déchaîner les vents (Juno praying to Aeolus to unleash the wind) (D. Lavalle 1987) for the townhouse Mansart built for himself on rue des Tournelles. He was also asked to paint a fresco for the chapel of St. Gregory in the Invalides church—Jules Hardouin-Mansart’s 1703 masterpiece. Lively in its execution, this work on paper is characteristic of Corneille’s style—his use of a brown wash over lines of red chalk, the undulating rendering of the draperies, and the employment of glued-on pieces of paper for revisions. E.B. and D.P.-R.

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PL . 12

Jan van Somer (b. c. 1645 – d. after 1699) Portrait d’ homme, la main posée sur une tête de mort (Portrait of a man with his hand on a skull) Black and white chalk, and wash of India ink on vellum 281 x 242 mm Inv. no. Mas.2011 (L.597) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : J. Masson, marked lower left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA lower right (L. 829a) Bibliogr aphy: F. Lugt, 1950, no. 597

Originally from Amsterdam, Jan van Somer specialized in halflength portraits that showcased the elegance of the rich bourgeoisie of Holland and London (where he was no doubt active). In tandem with a likely career as an art dealer, he also made engravings in which he extended his iconographic field to include religious and genre scenes. This drawing was linked by Frits Lugt in 1950 to another work on paper, also at the École des Beaux-Arts, Portrait de femme âgée (Portrait of an elderly woman) (Inv. no. Mas.2012), which presumably depicts the model’s mother. Dressed in black, his gloves in his left hand, the model places his right hand on the head of a skull on a table. This gesture, with its moral implications, references the fragility of life and acts as a kind of memento mori that stands in contrast with the character’s very assured attitude. He reflects the state of mind of the Dutch Protestant middle class, which, with its opulence obtained through maritime commerce, wanted to emphasize its appetite for more spiritual sustenance. The apparent sobriety of the dark outfit helps reinforce this image. The self-importance of the pose contrasts with the inexpressive character of the face and its heavy, unattractive features. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 13

François de Troy (b. Toulouse, 1645 – d. Paris, 1730) Étude pour un portrait de femme en Vénus (Study for a portrait of a woman as Venus) Black and white chalk on paper 367 x 264 mm Inv. no. PM 1181 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: verso, in pencil: H. Rigaud; in pen and brown ink: 55 Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked lower right (L. 3561); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1987, marked EBA lower left (L. 829) Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1989, no. 47; Toulouse and Nantes, Musée des Grands Augustins and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 1997–98, no. 32

Alongside Hyacinthe Rigaud and Nicolas de Largillière, François de Troy belongs to the generation of painters who transformed the genre of portraiture in France, beginning in the 1680s. Originally from Toulouse, the artist spent most of his career in Paris, receiving commissions from the court as well as the municipality. The drawing from the École des Beaux-Arts is a preparatory sketch for Portrait de femme en Vénus désarmant l’Amour (Portrait of a woman as Venus, disarming Love), a painting that reappeared on the art market in 1988 and is now in a private collection (Dominique Brême, 1989). Clad in a dressing gown (an item of clothing introduced in the late-seventeenth century), her hair messily piled on top of her head, the model holds a barely sketched quiver of arrows in her right hand, while her left arm hangs at her side. The artist used the sketch to fix the figure’s general attitude and body language, as comparison with the painting reveals. In the latter, the woman uses her right hand to keep the putto symbolizing Love from releasing his torch, while her left hand extends the quiver out of his reach. The use of the attributes of Venus, a pagan goddess, for the portrait of a young woman of the aristocracy exemplifies the then-new genre of the storied portrait, in which François de Troy excelled. This work, which can be dated 1698–1700, reflects the evolution of the artist’s style toward a freer, firmer, and more incisive mode of drawing that accompanied his gradual abandonment of the aux trois crayons technique (black, red, and white chalk) in favor of black chalk alone. E.B. and A.C.

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PL . 14

Nicolas de Largillièrre (after) (b. Paris, 1656 – d. Paris, 1746) Portrait d’un gentilhomme à mi-corps, tenant une lettre des deux mains (Portrait of a gentleman, half-length, holding a letter in both hands) Black and white chalk, and smudging on paper 285 x 223 mm Inv. no. Mas.1179 (Rigaud) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829a) Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1927, no. 307

One of the emblematic portraitists of the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the Regency, Largillière is famous for his portrait Belle Strasbourgeoise (The Strasbourg beauty) (Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv. no. 2146). This drawing is a copy after one of his canvases, of which there are several versions, one of which was sold at auction (Tajan, Paris, 15-12-2006, lot 90). While the sitter’s identity remains unknown, his armor suggests a military career. The austerity of the cuirass is counterbalanced by his animated pose—he seems caught in the midst of reading a letter casually propped against the back of a chair. Gazing at the viewer, he stands out against a background composed of draperies and a few elements of landscape. If the drawing’s subject cannot be identified, we can locate its initial model in the output of Largillière’s flourishing workshop circa 1715. Many studies were executed that aimed to establish a typology of poses, hands, and clothes meant for the painter’s clients. The activity of copyists played a fundamental role in the production of multiple versions of a single painting. The success of a pose, like the one in this work on paper, could lead to its reuse in other portraits, whether drawn, painted, or engraved. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 15

Hyacinthe Rigaud (b. Perpignan, France, 1659 – d. Paris, 1743) Portrait de Pierre Gillet, procureur au parlement de Paris (Portrait of Pierre Gillet, procurer at the Parliament of Paris) Black and white chalk on paper 313 x 248 mm Inv. no. EBA 1510 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : A.-H.-E. de Queux de Saint-Hilaire; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1893, stamped by the Bibliothèque de l’École des Beaux-Arts lower right Exhibitions: London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1932, no. 632; Paris, École des BeauxArts, 1933a, no. 147; Bern, Kunstmuseum Bern, 1959, no. 184

Under the reign of Louis XIV, the genre of portraiture experienced a true golden age. Whether written, painted, sculpted, or engraved, it became a social and individual necessity. Hyacinthe Rigaud, along with a few other great artists, occupied the forefront of this trend, and his studio functioned like a business. His 1701 depiction of Louis XIV definitively fixed the typology of the ceremonial portrait and assured the artist’s renown. He received numerous commissions from both the court and the haute bourgeoisie, his reputation extending across Europe. The École des Beaux-Arts drawing shows then-seventy-four-year-old Pierre Gillet de la Renommière, a former prosecutor and doyen of the Gardes Minutes de la Chancellerie du Parlement de Paris. Captured in a three-quarter, half-length portrait, he is dressed in his black magistrate’s robe, always worn very loosely. The powerful authority of his personality is expressed in his willful features, particularly his energetic eyes and pursed lips. The drawing, which can be dated to circa 1702, is framed in an oval and was used as the basis for an engraving by Pierre Drevet. It is limned in black and white chalk on blue paper (one of Rigaud’s favorite techniques), which highlights the contrast between the model’s light wig and dark robe. The face is treated with great sensitivity, particularly in the effects of light that model its features, while the hair is treated with vigor. The clothing receives especially careful treatment in the rendering of texture of fabric, the pleats of which are indicated with great virtuosity. E.B. and E.P.

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PL . 16

Alexandre-François Desportes (after) (b. Champigneulle, France, 1661 – d. Paris, 1723) Portrait d’ homme en chasseur (Portrait of a man as a hunter) Black and white chalk on paper 195 x 160 mm Inv. no. Mas.902 (Alexandre-François Desportes) Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : J. Masson, marked bottom left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1925, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829)

Originally attributed to Alexandre-François Desportes, this portrait may be compared to the admissions piece he submitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture on August 1st, 1699, entitled Autoportrait en chasseur (Self-portrait as a hunter), now held by the Musée du Louvre (Inv. no. 3899). In it, we see the artist in huntsman’s attire, sitting on a mound of earth and leaning against a tree. His horse and two dogs surround him, watching over the freshly killed game. Admitted to the Académie as a “painter of animals,” Desportes gained renown for accompanying the king on his hunts and making portraits of his favorite dogs. Desportes’s self-portrait established a formula that was adopted by many artists, notably Antoine Pesne (G. de Latic and P. Jacky, 2010), whose 1733 work was based on François Joullain’s print made in emulation of Autoportrait en chasseur (BNF, Inv. no. Ed.86b). The drawing under consideration here derives incontestably from this same engraving: the figure appears in the same nonchalant pose— his legs crossed, his torso turned toward the viewer—and in a very similar hunting outfit. Aspects of the drawing’s style, though, point against an attribution to Desportes: a certain awkwardness in the rendering of the scene and its perspective, as well as the figure’s body. It is most likely an exercise done by a student familiarizing himself with the then-fashionable genre of the hunting portrait. The wig, breeches, and silk stockings indicate the model’s social standing, while the jacket casually left open suggests a moment of repose after the hunt. We should keep in mind that Louis XIV’s 1669 Ordinance of Water and Forestry banned the practice of hunting “for merchants, artisans, and the bourgeois, of whatever condition and quality they may be, not possessing fiefs, lordship, and jurisdiction, to hunt in any place, in any way or manner” (C. d’Anthenaise, 2010). A commoner who owned specific lands, however, could hunt—but only on his property. The majority of those seeking to commission this type of portrait were neither the nobility of Versailles nor of the provinces,

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occupied at the court or in their charge; they were, rather, members of the Parisian bourgeoisie, who, through the acquisition of land, had gained the right to hunt and wanted to highlight that fact through artistic representation. It is in this context that we must place our drawing, where the hunter’s outfit is not suitable for his activity, and wigs, like hunting, are part of the insignia of the nobility to which the bourgeoisie aspired. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 17

Alexis-Simon Belle (b. Paris, 1674 – d. Paris, 1734) Portrait de René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (Portrait of René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur) Black and white chalk on paper 318 x 217 mm Inv. no. Mas.796 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : Ph. de Chennevières, marked bottom left (L. 2072); J. Masson, marked bottom right (L. 1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA on bottom right (L. 829a) Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1927, no. 159; Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, fédération des artistes, 1931, no. 16

A student of François de Troy, Alexis-Simon Belle is known above all for his career as a portraitist at the court of Louis XV. In 1725, he painted the famous scientist and scholar René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur. Seated at his desk piled with scientific books and dressed in court attire with the cord of the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis, the model gazes at the viewer, his fingers pointing toward his works. Its whereabouts no longer known, the canvas originally adorned the scholar’s library at the Château de Réaumur. It was subsequently bequeathed to a relative, Madame Nancien, and served as the basis of an engraving by Philippe Simonneau. Traditionally considered a preparatory study for Belle’s painted portrait of Réamaur, this image was executed during a life-drawing session. The clothing is barely described in broad strokes of black chalk, while the artist devotes his time to capturing his subject’s face, with its deep and penetrating gaze. The light that comes from the left intensely illuminates the lines of the immobile, impervious countenance. The sketch is a good example of Belle’s method: after having his model pose live for preparatory studies, the artist worked alone in his studio over a period of time painting the details of his subject’s costume. The session that led to this drawing resulted in a second study, which is also in the collection of the École des Beaux-Arts (Inv. no. EBA 797) in which Réamaur appears more affable, as in the final, painted version. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 18

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (b. Paris, 1686 – d. Beauvais, France, 1755) Portrait de Marc-René de Voyer d’Argenson (Portrait of Marc-René de Voyer d’Argenson) Pen, black ink and ink wash, and white highlights on paper 224 x 157 mm Inv. no. PM 2504 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : Paris, Galerie de Bayser; M. Polakovits, marked bottom right (L. 3561); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1987, marked EBA bottom left (L. 829a) Bibliogr aphy: H. N. Opperman, 1977, vol. II, pp. 950–51, no. D 109 A Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1989, no. 72

Famous for his tapestry of the Chasses royales de Louis XV (Royal hunts of Louis XV), woven at the Gobelins manufactory, and his depictions of animals in the Royal Menagerie (1739–46), JeanBaptiste Oudry is known as one of the most talented animal painters of the eighteenth century, alongside Alexandre-François Desportes. He engaged in the genre of portraiture as well, as evidenced by the numerous studies collected in his Livre de raison (Book of reason), now at the Louvre, which dates between 1713 and 1718 (H. N. Opperman, 1977). This drawing depicts Marc-René de Voyer d’Argenson, for whom Oudry made a large painted portrait (now lost but known through two drawings at the Louvre). A lieutenant general of the police from 1697 to 1718, this formidable character sought to strengthen surveillance in public places and fought against the Jansenists. Saint-Simon described him as “a terrifying figure who recalled the three judges of hell, and enjoyed his mental superiority […] he had long been the police and the inquisition in a transcendent way.” Ambitious in its composition, Oudry’s work on paper presents de Voyer d’Argenson in his impressive magistrate’s outfit, comfortably seated, finger pointed toward documents placed on his desk. He is caught in an imperious, dynamic pose that conveys both an authoritarian character and the important function he occupies. Rapidly sketched, the setting, which is very conventional for this sort of official portrait—a large tapestry, the detail of a column, and a few books—contains no intimate elements that might reveal the personality of the model. E.B. and D.P.-R.

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PL . 19

Louis Tocqué (attributed to) (b. Paris, 1696 – d. Paris, 1772) Portrait d’un peintre, vu à mi-corps (Portrait of a painter, half-length) Black and white chalk on paper 238 x 181 mm Inv. no. Mas.1240 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : H. Destailleur; Jean Masson, marked lower left (L. 1494a); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1925, marked EBA lower right (L. 825) Bibliogr aphy: A. Doria, 1929, p. 157, no. 565 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1927, no. 334

The number of drawings depicting painters in front of their easels is considerable in the French school of the eighteenth century, making it difficult to pin down models and authors. Auctions held after the deaths of artists helped reveal this enormous output, but very few connections and identifications have been made with any certainty to this day. Most of these works on paper are now attributed to Louis Tocqué or Jean-Marc Nattier, leaving in the shadows less famous personalities like Jean Valade or Guillaume Voiriot, who deserve proper attention. (Paying homage to their talents early in his career, Voiriot painted portraits of both Tocqué and Nattier. One, exhibited at the Salon of 1759, is now at the Musée du Louvre.1) Attributed to Tocqué by Count Arnauld Doria in his 1929 monograph, this drawing shares many features with the 1739 portrait of the artist painted by Jean-Marc Nattier (at the time, Tocqué’s future father-in-law) now held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon (Inv. no. 2384): we find the same arrangement of the model in a half-length portrait, his chest oriented three-quarters to the left, his palette resting on his left arm. Tocqué also made a portrait Nattier in 1762 at the prompting of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Doria’s attribution relies in part on a stylistic parallel with the Portrait du Dauphin, fils de Louis XV (Portrait of the Dauphin, son of Louis XV) at the Musée du Louvre (Inv. no. 33135) and a sketch for the painting, dated 1739, also held by the Louvre. The same vigorous line appears around the contours of the angular hands, and the eyes and mouth are sketched in an identical manner, with a few small strokes. The artist portrays the figure’s energetic nature through the dynamic position of the torso caught in motion. Isolated against the sheet of paper, the painter, his palette on his forearm, stares with great 1

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We would like to thank Xavier Salmon for suggesting the artist Guillaume Voiriot.


concentration at the subject he is observing, while holding a brush in his right hand that has not yet been dipped in any color. The elegant pose is enhanced by the painter’s attire, a buttoned doublet from which the wide cuffs of his shirt escape. As was his habit, Tocqué accords much importance to the rendering of the hands, particularly the right one, with its large size and square fingers. Executed quickly in broad strokes, this is clearly a general sketch, and the sitter’s face is not depicted. Like many of his contemporaries, Tocqué usually adopted this practice, preferring to work on the face in an isolated, detailed study in oil, which he integrated directly into the painted version. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 20

Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle (b. Paris, 1717 – d. Paris, 1806) Jardinier tirant une brouette dit portrait de Thomas Blaikie (Gardener pulling a wheelbarrow [Portrait of Thomas Blaikie]) Black, red, and white chalk, and watercolor on paper 248 x 184 mm Inv. no. EBA 655 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : H. Destailleur, sale, Paris, April 27 and 28, 1866, no. 39 bis, 12, 50 f; Alfred Armand; Prosper Valton; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1908, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829) Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 1984, p. 224, no. 278 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1933a, no. 21; Paris, École des BeauxArts, 1933b, no. 47; Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1965, no. 5; Paris, Los Angeles, and Hamburg, École des Beaux-Arts, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1981–82, no. 91

Famous for his watercolors featuring the great personalities of the court under the Regency and during the reign of Louis XVI, Carmontelle here depicts a gardener identified in the 1866 Destailleur catalogue as Monsieur Duméril. The artist often indulged in the genre, then quite fashionable, of the portrait travesti, as attested by his Duchesse de Chaulnes en jardinière dans une allée (The Duchess of Chaulnes as a gardener in an allée) in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The rosy-cheeked young woman is dressed in a simple gardening outfit, whose immaculate state suggests an absence of heavy yard work. High heels protrude subtly from beneath the hem of her garment. Monsieur Duméril, by contrast, has a ruddy complexion and surprisingly stained socks. His coat is full of holes and poorly patched. The duchess retains her lofty bearing even with a rake in her hand. Our character, with his back curved and legs spread, does not possess the same poise as he painstakingly pulls a wheelbarrow. This rather unflattering portrayal appears to have been a caricature of the Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie (Laurence Chatel de Brancion, 2003), a great rival of Carmontelle’s for the garden at the Château du Monceau, which the latter originally designed, but which—much to his chagrin—was subsequently entrusted to Blaikie. Taking advantage of the Anglomania that marked the arts in France during the 1780s, Blaikie obtained several other prestigious projects, such as the Bagatelle for the Count of Artois’s Château de Malmaison. Using a favored technique, Carmontelle associates his model with a specific landscape: the crenellated tower in the background evokes the English gothic style of one of the structures Blaikie designed for the Duke of Orléans’s garden at the Château du Raincy. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 21

Benoît-Louis Prévost (b. Paris, c. 1735 – d. Paris, 1804–09) Portrait de femme (Portrait of a woman) Brush and wash of India ink on paper 175 x 131 mm Inv. no. PM 3003 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: lower right, in black ink: Prevost fecit 1795 (Made by Prevost 1795) Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked lower right (L. 3561); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1987, marked lower left (L. 829)

A student of Jean Ouvrier, Benoît-Louis Prévost is known mainly for his work as an engraver, especially for the famous frontispiece of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia (made after a drawing by Charles-Nicolas Cochin) and several illustrations in l’Abbé de SaintNon’s Voyage pittoresque (Scenic trip). We are also indebted to him for a number of drawn portraits, many of which were identified by Perrin Stein and Mary Tavener Holmes in 1999, including this one from the Mathias Polakovits collection, unpublished and dated 1795. Unlike his 1787 portrait of Madame Michel de Grilleau (P. Stein and M. Tavener Holmes, 1999), now in a collection in New York, the looming face of the unidentified woman in Prévost’s 1795 Thermidor portrait appears determined, resolute. Using only India ink applied lightly with a brush, the artist skillfully describes the respective characters—one gentle, the other willful—and above all their attire, which follows the vagaries of fashion. Our model wears a dark dress, the neckline adorned with multiples pleats; her neck is covered in a bright white scarf called a “Charlotte Corday.” Plain earrings peek out from under her bonnet that meet with the stringent requirements condemning the wearing of conspicuous fine jewelry in favor of accessories in simpler shapes and more sober materials, like steel (N. Pellegrin, 1989). Attached to her hat is the revolutionary cockade women were required to wear in 1793, after the decree of September 16. Although rendered in black and white, we may no doubt assume that its striped ribbons are tricolor. Fashioned from a pretty piece of satin, it is not like the usual cockade made of wool that the average woman might have worn and shows how coquetry made use of obligation. This sort of adaptation soon drew the ire of ardent republicans, who saw it as a vulgarization of a symbol of the military, first and foremost; incidents broke out in which women had their silk ribbons snatched off, and the Parisian administration banned any cockade other than a woolen one (N. Pellegrin, 1989).

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While the identity of this woman with piercing eyes remains unknown, her attire allows us to suppose that she belonged to the nouvelle bourgeoisie that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution; enjoying a new social status, she is seduced by a flirtatiousness from which the symbols of the courtly pleasures of Versailles have been banned. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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André Pujos (b. Toulouse, c. 1740 – d. Paris, 1788) Portrait de femme âgée coiffée d’un bonnet (Portrait of an elderly woman in a bonnet) Black chalk and white gouache on paper 135 mm in diameter Inv. no. PM 103 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : V. Déséglise, marked verso and on mounting (L. 356c); Paris, Galerie de Bayser; M. Polakovits, marked on mounting, lower right (L. 3561); gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1987, marked EBA lower left (L. 829)

A native of Toulouse, André Pujos studied there with Guillaume Cammas and his son François-Lambert and was a contemporary of painters Charles-Nicolas Cochin fils and Quentin de La Tour. He specialized in the art of the portrait and the miniature. Pujos left his hometown for Paris, where he was accepted at the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1769. In 1774, he showed more than twenty-two portraits at the Salon, judged with some severity by Edmond de Goncourt, who described him as “a conscientious, applied draftsman whose penciling is somewhat cold but deftly crosshatched.” In black chalk highlighted with white gouache, this portrait depicts an elderly woman, no doubt of modest means, in bust, in three-quarters. Her white bonnet is kept on her head by a wide black ribbon. Her neck, shoulders, and chest are covered with a thick, white piece of linen, while the rest of her clothing—her dress and what seems to be an apron—is dark. Another distinctive sign: the old woman wears a thin, black ribbon around her neck from which a discreet Christian cross is suspended. The vibrant treatment of the ground with its small, white dots, as well as the orientation of the light, coming from the right, are characteristic of the artist. These elements can be found in his 1777 portrait of Anne-Charlotte Marrier, now in the Musée Paul Dupuy (Inv. no. 66). The works also share a similar way of marking the shadows around the neck and on the cheeks with precise and methodical hatching. These affinities—and above all the study of the model’s outfit and hair—allow us to date this work to circa 1775–85. E.B. and A.C.

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Pierre-Alexandre Wille (attributed to) (b. Paris, 1748 – d. Paris, 1821) Portrait de jeune fille, vue de trois quarts (Portrait of a young girl, three-quarter view) Pen and brown ink on paper 275 x 207 mm Inv. no. PM 1514 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: verso, in pen and brown ink: Wille Provenance : M. Polakovits, marked lower right (L. 3561); gift to the École des BeauxArts in 1987

Born in Paris in 1748, Pierre-Alexandre Wille was the son of the engraver Johann-Georg Wille (L. Hautecoeur, 1913). He apprenticed with Jean-Baptiste Greuze in April 1761, before finishing his training with Joseph-Marie Vien, and was deeply marked by the art of his first teacher. This major source of inspiration led Pierre Lavallée to judge Wille rather harshly, calling him a “disciple un peu alourdi de Greuze” (“a somewhat ungainly disciple of Greuze”). Awarded an agrée from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1774, he exhibited paintings in the realist vein at its Salon as well as various têtes d’expression (sketches of facial expressions) (S. Catala, 2013). We are obliged to him for several genre scenes, particularly La Séduction, dated 1788, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 1789, he joined the partisans of the revolution and died in 1821 in a state of poverty. The École des Beaux-Arts has several drawings attributed to him, seven of which are from the Mathias Polakovits Collection, including this image. Executed in pen and brown ink, the work depicts the head and shoulders of a young girl wearing a dress and top that modestly cover her neck and shoulders. She has on a round bonnet, a more elaborate version of which appears in the Galerie des modes et costumes (Gallery of fashions and costumes), a series of engraved fashion and costume plates inaugurated in 1778. The figure stands out against a ground composed of a network of vigorous crosshatching. The contours of her face are conveyed by a technique similar to guillochage (needle etching) and rendered by a set of fairly narrow lines on the cheeks. This technique, similar to engraving, is characteristic of Wille’s style. We find it also in the red chalk portrait Homme âgé tourné vers la droite (Elderly man turned toward the right) from earlier in the painter’s career, now held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen (Inv. no. AG. 1974.4.3966). Dated between 1780 and 1820, the picture under consideration here is one of the small group of portraits the artist made in ink or red chalk. Although it attests to Wille’s technical mastery with the pen,

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particularly in the modeling of the face, the drawing is not equal in quality to other examples of the artist’s work at the École des BeauxArts, including Portrait de jeune garçon (Portrait of a young boy), signed and dated 1774 (Inv. no. PM 2876). E.B. and A.C.

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André Dutertre (b. Paris, 1753 – d. Paris, 1842) Portrait de l’aide de camp de Murad Bey (Portrait of Murad Bey’s aide-de-camp) Charcoal on paper 522 x 374 mm Inv. no. PC 11155-47a Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: bottom left, in pencil: l’aide de Camps de/Murad-bai au Kaire (Aide-decamp of/Murad Bey in Cairo) Provenance: J. E. Gatteaux; bequeathed to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1883, marked EBA bottom right (L. 832)

A student of Joseph-Marie Vien, illustrator André Dutertre participated in General Bonaparte’s 1798 expedition to Egypt, charged with representing the mission’s 179 participants. During this formidable adventure, the artist filled numerous sketchbooks containing landscape views and scenes of everyday life that he discovered traveling across the country—all preserved at the École des Beaux-Arts. Dutertre also made more formal renderings of important personalities such as Murad Bey, a famous adversary of Bonaparte during the Battle of the Pyramids. The work on paper in the collection of the École des Beaux-Arts presents the face of this brave fighter’s aide-de-camp, who might be Ibrahim Bey al-Sannari (MarieAude Aumonier, 2006), considered by Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, an Egyptian chronicler of the campaign, to be one of Murad Bey’s closest advisors. Seen from the front in a half-length portrait, the model, dressed in traditional garb, is captured in strong light coming from the right. This harsh illumination reinforces the expressive intensity of the young man’s eyes, considered by his contemporaries to be unsettling, even diabolical. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 25

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (b. Montauban, France, 1780 – d. Paris, 1867) Portrait de Madame Leblanc (Portrait of Madame Leblanc) Graphite on paper 295 x 220 mm Inv. no. EBA 1095 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: bottom right: offert à Madame Leblanc par son très humble serviteur Ingres (given to Mrs. Leblanc by her very humble servant Ingres) Provenance : gift of Mrs. Édouard André to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1894, marked EBA bottom left (L. 829) Exhibitions: Rome, Société romaine des Beaux-Arts, 1904; Paris, Palais des BeauxArts, 1913, no. 343; Paris, Chambre syndicale de la curiosité et des Beaux-Arts, 1921, no. 93; Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1934, no. 143; Brussels, Palais des Arts, 1936; Paris, Palais national des arts, 1937, no. 672; Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1946; Prague, Prague, 1955; Prague, Narodni galerie, 1956, no. 1; Montauban, Musée Ingres, 1967, no. 76; Rome, Villa Medici, 1968, no. 101; Tokyo and Osaka, National Museum of Western Art and National Museum of Art, 1981, no. 79

A lady-in-waiting to Élisa Bacciochi—Grand Duchess of Tuscany and sister of Napoleon—Françoise Poncelle married Jacques-Louis Leblanc in Florence in 1811. The son of a bailiff from Dauphin, Leblanc was then a secretary in Élisa’s cabinet. He also served as governor of the principality of Piombino and deputy governor of the ducal house. After the fall of the Empire, Leblanc remained in Florence. He embraced a career as a banker and met Ingres in the circle of expatriates, probably in 1820 or 1821, at the home of Swiss businessman Jean-Pierre Gonin. Like the Pastoret and Gonin-Thomeguex families, the Leblancs were among the main benefactors of the artist during his stay in Florence, which lasted until 1824, and during which time the École des Beaux-Arts drawing was most likely made (H. Naef, 1966). In 1823, it served, along with numerous other studies, as the basis for a painted portrait. A companion portrait of JacquesLouis Leblanc was painted the same year. Both were acquired by Edgar Degas during the 1896 sale of the Isaure Leblanc collection and now belong to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Inv. nos. 19.77.1 and 19.77.2). Ingres draws Madame Leblanc’s body and clothing in broad strokes, to linger on the contours of the face, its shadows and lights. Her tranquility and vivacity are evident in her slight smile—a testament to Ingres’s psychological acuteness along with his affection for his model, whom he called “the example of her sex.” E.B. and H.L.

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James Pradier (b. Geneva, 1790 – d. Paris, 1852) Portrait de Claire Pradier à l’ âge de seize ans (Portrait of Claire Pradier at sixteen) Black and white chalk on paper 333 x 257 mm Inv. no. EBA 7265 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : Librairie Blaizot; Galerie Artemis, Paris, 2003, no. 4; Christie’s, July 4, 2006, no. 130; acquired by the Association des Amateurs de dessins du cabinet des Beaux-Arts; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 2006 Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 2006, no. 13; E. Brugerolles, 2011, no. 14 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 2006, no. 13; Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 2011, no. 14

A native of Geneva, the sculptor James Pradier spent most of his career in France; beginning in 1828, he taught at the École des Beaux-Arts and exhibited regularly at the Académies des Beaux-Arts’s Salon. He is particularly well-known for two official commissions in Paris, the Renommées for the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile (1833) and the Victoires at the tomb of Napoleon I (1843). The drawing from the École des Beaux-Arts shows a more intimate side of his production—family portraits of his wife, Louise Dupont, their three children, and his illegitimate daughter Claire, conceived with Juliette Drouet, a model who became Victor Hugo’s long-time mistress. Claire’s health was extremely fragile; she fell ill in 1846 and died at the age of twenty. The relationship between young Claire and the sculptor was complex, he played the role of father only intermittently, leaving it to Victor Hugo to care for her. Nevertheless, the artist depicted Claire often, alone or surrounded by her half-siblings. She appears here at the age of sixteen in an elegant outfit enhanced by an umbrella and a straw hat, which she holds delicately by a ribbon. This drawing presents the image of a happy child, though the reality appears to have been more nuanced, as illustrated by the lines Victor Hugo wrote for her after her death in Poem XIV of Book V of Contemplations (1854): “Toi qui, dans ta beauté naïve et recueillie/Mêlais à la madone auguste d’Italie/La Flamande qui rit à travers les houblons/Douce Claire aux yeux noirs avec des cheveux blonds.” (“You, who in your naïve, pensive beauty/Blended an august Madonna of Italy/With a Flemish girl laughing through hops/Sweet Claire with black eyes and blond hair.”) E.B and H.V. de S.

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Anatole Fouquet (b. Paris, 1793 – d. Clichy-la-Garenne, France, 1852) Portrait d’ homme (Portrait of a man) Graphite and white gouache on paper 402 x 286 mm Inv. no. EBA 909 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: bottom left, in graphite: A. Fouquet Provenance : Achille-François Wasset; bequest to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1895, stamped 27003 bottom left

These two portraits are by an amateur draftsman and erudite collector who served as an adjunct archivist to the Crown and, from 1839 to 1849, as mayor of Clichy-la-Garenne, a commune, where he lived at 30, rue de Neuilly. He used his mandate to clean up municipal accounts, organize a tribute to Napoleon’s ashes by the commune in 1840, establish a mental institution for workers and the poor, pave streets, widen traffic arteries, and implement public gas lighting. “[T]he great watercolor landscapes he exhibited at various Salons showed what he might have done had he devoted himself to that exclusively,” said Fouquet’s nephew and namesake Anatole Courde de Montaiglon. The latter was an artist, an attaché at the Musée du Louvre, a librarian and professor at the École des Chartes, and a founding member of the Society for the History of French Art, established in 1872. Courde de Montaiglon inherited more than his uncle’s proper name; he was the sole heir to his fortune (which encompassed a large property in Levallois) and was no doubt influenced in his choice of career by Fouquet’s profound inclination for the arts and his work as an archivist. Indeed, the one-time mayor’s bibliomania was so great that, after his death, it took five sales (held December 14–18, 1852) to dispose of all the books in his library. Fouquet was also a collector of drawings, including Homère sauvé par le Temps des ruines du monde (Homer saved by Time from the ruins of the world) by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, now at the Musée Magnin in Dijon (Inv. no. 1938 DF 298). Here, Fouquet tries his hand at the genre of portraiture. These two unidentified characters are seen at three quarters, from the waist up. Motionless, they fix their eyes on the viewer. The realistically rendered drawing style, with its intimation of photography, is echoed in the figures’ neutral expressions, bourgeois outfits and hairstyles, and conventional poses. E.B. and H.L.

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PL . 28

Portrait de femme (Portrait of a woman) Graphite and white gouache on paper 372 x 282 mm Inv. no. EBA 910 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : Achille-François Wasset; bequest to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1895, stamped 27003 bottom left

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PL . 29

Paul Delaroche (b. Paris, 1797 – d. Paris, 1856) Portrait de Brascassat en buste, vu de dos (Bust of Brascassat, seen from behind) Pen and brown ink on paper 230 x 179 mm Inv. no. EBA 773 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: bottom, in pencil: Brascassat par Delaroche (Brascassat by Delaroche) Provenance : Alfred Armand; Prosper Valton; gift from Mrs. Valton to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1908, marked EBA bottom right (L. 829) Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 1984, no. 309 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 1934, no. 47; Paris, Musée d’Orsay, 1987, no. 48, reproduced p. 51

A coveted honor and career boon, particularly during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Rome Prize garnered its winner a four-year stay at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Rome. A native of Bordeaux, the painter Brascassat only earned second place for his 1825 submission to the competition: a landscape entitled La Chasse de Méléagre ou le sanglier de Calydon (The hunt of Meleager, or the Calydonian boar). However, thanks to the intervention of the Duchess of Berry, King Charles X granted Brascassat a special dispensation to spend a year at the Académie in Rome. Upon his return, he specialized in what Théophile Gautier called “animal” painting (favoring the representation of bulls and other bovines). This genre became a particularly essential aspect of his work after his later travels to England and Holland. Elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1846, he faced harsh criticism during its annual Salons. The growing success, at the time, of Constant Troyon and Rosa Bonheur opened a new path for the genre and the richer handling of Bracassat’s stormy and spectacular compositions were favored over the fine, meticulous touch of his “Dutch” manner. Weakened by these multiple attacks and the political events of 1848, Bracassat succumbed to “his natural sadness” (Charles Marionneau) and gradually withdrew from artistic life, only showing once more at the Salon of 1855 before his death twelve years later. Dating from around 1853, this drawing by Paul Delaroche was conceived at the same time as another sketch made at the same sitting at the Académie, which shows Bracassat from the front (Inv. no. EBA 770). Made a few seconds apart, both capture Brascassat in a pose no

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doubt familiar to him: his left elbow leaning on the table, his chin resting in his hand, listening to one of his colleagues giving a speech. The figure is seen leaning forward slightly; his erect back and raised head show the deep concentration in which he was immersed. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL. 30

Paul Delaroche (b. Paris, 1797 – d. Paris, 1856) Portrait du baron Taylor: croquis exécuté au cours d’une séance à l’Institut (Portrait of Baron Taylor: sketch made during a sitting at the Institute) Pen and brown ink and ink wash on paper 230 x 133 mm Inv. no. EBA 775 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: lower right, in pencil: Bon Taylor par Delaroche (Bon Taylor by Delaroche) Provenance : Alfred Armand; Prosper Valton; a gift from Mrs. Valton to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1908, marked bottom right (L. 829a) Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 1984, no. 307, reproduced p. 233

Work meetings at the Académie des Beaux-Arts were a chance for its members—including Paul Delaroche, who was accepted in 1832—to make portraits of each other. The long and, at times, tedious sessions provided an ideal moment to pose. In an 1858 book on Delaroche, critic and painter Henri Delaborde mentioned these little portraits sketched from life, which in time would constitute “a gallery of the most eminent men of our era.” Those in the collection of the École des Beaux-Arts date from 1852–53. Here, Paul Delaroche depicts Baron Taylor (about sixty years old at the time) as a man with a strong character. As Eliane Maingot observed in her biography of Taylor, “No frivolity in him at all, or even gaiety. He is serious, with something British in his expression. A stiff upper lip in addition to military rigor.” His composure can be explained by his father, of English origin and naturalized French, and his military rigor by his career, which began in the National Guard in 1813 and ended in 1843 at the rank of Squadron Leader. It is during this period that he traveled through France and Europe, discovering his passion for the arts. In 1820, he published the Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France (A picturesque and romantic tour in old France) with Charles Nodier, one of his most famous volumes alongside Voyage pittoresque en Espagne, en Portugal et sur la côte d’Afrique, de Tanger à Tétouan (1832) (A Picturesque Tour in Spain, Portugal, and along the Coast of Africa, from Tangier to Tetuan). In 1838, he served as inspector for the Académie des Beaux-Arts and, in 1847, was elected as an independent member. A patron and benefactor, “so devoted to all suffering,” as Victor Hugo put it, Baron Taylor notably created associations to support artists. Paul Delaroche presents an impressive image of this man at the summit of his official career: leaning at his desk, he is captured in a very natural attitude, legs crossed, hands resting on his frock coat, his face concentrated on listening to the speeches being given in

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the assembly. Delaroche used vigorous strokes of the pen to render not only the context in which his model is situated, but also the detached, slightly haughty face and robust, determined silhouette. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 31

Paul Flandrin (b. Lyon, 1811 – d. Paris, 1902) Portrait du peintre Signol (Portrait of the painter Signol) Graphite on paper 239 x 185 mm Inv. no. EBA 3722 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: lower right, in graphite: Paul Flandrin Rome 1835 Provenance : Mrs. Signol; a gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1894 Exhibitions: Paris and Lyon, 1984–85, Musée du Luxembourg and Musée des BeauxArts de Lyon, no. 195; Tobu, Museum of Art, 1996, no. 14; Rome, Villa Medici, 2003, no. 65; Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 2007, no. 26

A native of Lyon, Paul Flandrin trained there with Pierre Révoil. Though famous during his lifetime, he remained in the shadow of his older brother Hippolyte. The two left for Paris, in 1829, to work in the studio of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Paul was an unsuccessful candidate for the Rome Prize, which Hippolyte won in 1832; he accompanied the latter to the Villa Medici, Académie des Beaux-Arts outpost in Rome, in January 1834, shortly before Ingres became its director in 1835. On their return, they participated in the décor of many Parisian churches, notably those of Saint-Séverin and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. A fine landscapist, Paul Flandrin also worked in the genre of portraiture, transcribing the various personalities and moods of his models in a style that retains a trace of his passage through Ingres’s studio. Here, the artist portrays his friend Emile Signol during their joint stay at the Villa Medici. Before winning the Rome Prize in 1830, the painter specialized in the great interiors of the churches SaintEustache, La Madeleine, and Saint-Augustin. Flandrin’s drawing, dated 1835, slightly precedes his friend’s return to France. The profile, standing out against a plain ground, is of a serious, melancholy face whose expression echoes the painter’s static and hieratic pose. Arm leaning against the back of the seat, hands clasped, and staring vacantly, Signol seems absorbed in thought. This composition—which appears in Flandrin’s contemporaneous portraits of the composer Ambroise Thomas and his brother Hippolyte, now at the Musée du Louvre (Inv. nos. RF 2792 and RF 2795)—bears the mark of Ingres’s influence in the purity of its line and in its stylistic reference to the Italian and German Renaissances. E.B. and H.L.

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PL . 32

Charles Garnier (b. Paris, 1825 – d. Paris, 1898) Caricature d’Émile Trélat (Caricature of Émile Trélat) Pen and black ink on paper 204 x 135 mm Inv. no. PC 41829-102 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: center, in pen and black ink: Trélat; lower right, in pen and black ink: 1879 par Charles Garnier (1879 by Charles Garnier) Provenance : Louise Garnier; a gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1898 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 2010–11, no. 50

Trained as an engineer, the architect Émile Trélat founded the École Spéciale d’Architecture in 1865, an institution supported by Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc, who saw it as an alternative to the academic training of architects at the École des Beaux-Arts. Trélat also taught civil engineering for more than forty years at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (1854–95) and was elected deputy of the Seine in his later years (1891–98). An advocate of Viollet-Le-Duc’s ideas, Trélat defended a concept of architecture that was radically different from that of Garnier, and the two men engaged in lively debate in the press, in Le XIXe siècle (The nineteenth century), which became all the rage around 1872. Garnier did not spare his adversary in this highly efficient caricature, which his wife, Louise, carefully kept in a portfolio along with three other similar sketches, now at the École des Beaux-Arts (Inv. nos. PC 41829-102, 41829-112, and 41829-118). With rudimentary geometric forms and a few strokes of the pen, he suggests a face limited to two large, globular eyes, a slightly upturned moustache, and a large, bushy beard. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 33

Charles Garnier (b. Paris, 1825 – d. Paris, 1898) Jules Lenepveu malade de la grippe à Menton (Jules Lenepveu sick with the flu in Menton) Graphite on paper 332 x 253 mm Inv. no. PC 41829-259 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: lower right, in ink: Jules Lenepveu malade de la grippe/à Menton mars 1873/par Charles Garnier (Jules Lenepveu sick with the flu/in Menton March 1873/by Charles Garnier) Provenance : Louise Garnier; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1898 Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 2010, p. 64, ill. 23

The painter Jules Lenepveu was a close friend of the architect Charles Garnier, whom he met when he arrived at the French Academy in Rome in 1847. On returning to Paris, Lenepveu worked on the décor of the Opéra Garnier, along with Gustave Boulanger, among other commissioned artists. Notably, he designed the ceiling of the auditorium, now covered by the work of Marc Chagall. He was also responsible for the ceiling of the casino of Monte-Carlo, commissioned a few years later. Called “Nipote” by his friends, he was a regular at the Garnier family’s Parisian dinners and vacationed with them in Menton and Bordighera, where the architect built his own villa. This drawing evokes one of these trips, during which, as Louise Garnier’s letter of April 19, 1873 attests, Lenepveu suffered from a bad flu. The artist, who had just been appointed director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Rome at the Villa Medici (a position he held from 1873 to 1878), stopped to visit his friends, who took care of him. Taking advantage of his friend’s state of ill health, Garnier made two caricatures of Lenepveu. In one, he is seated in a large armchair, wrapped in a coat with a fur collar and wearing a cap (Inv. no. 41829-260). In the other, a bust on view here, Garnier focuses on the painter’s emaciated face—his strong features, hollow cheeks, tousled hair, and eyes exhausted with fatigue. E.B. and H.V. de S.

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Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (b. Valenciennes, France, 1827 – d. Paris, 1875) Portrait-charge d’un homme vu en pied de face (Caricature of a man, full length, frontal view) Black and white chalk on paper 158 x 122 mm Inv. no. EBA 1787-353 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Provenance : G. Stirbey; gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1882, marked EBA lower right (L. 831) Bibliogr aphy: L. Barthélemy, 2004, p. 126; E. Brugerolles, 2012, no. 81 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 2012a, no. 81

A winner of the 1854 Rome Prize, Carpeaux received many prestigious commissions from the imperial court, above all from Napoleon III. A prolific painter and draftsman, Carpeaux is best known for La Danse (The Dance), his controversial contribution to the Opéra Garnier consisting of a group of entwined nude figures sculpted for the building’s facade. Portraiture occupied a good deal of his production in 1854. In Valenciennes, he made quick sketches from life of his family members, especially his cousins, the Lauts, whose fine profiles were a source of inspiration for him. His wife, Amélie de Montfort, whom he married in 1869, and their four children are also portrayed with great fondness and warmth in many drawings and sculptures. His official portraits included numerous highly prestigious sitters—the imperial couple, Napoleon III and empress Eugénie, as well as the Marquise de la Valette and Madame Chardon-Lagache. Carpeaux happily engaged in caricature, which allowed him to show “his ability to capture all the significant movements of a temperament, a passion, a state, in short, a character” (Emmanuelle Delapierre, 2008–09). In this caricature, done in black chalk like most of his drawings, the artist highlights the model’s extra weight and short stature by placing the arms behind the back and omitting the feet. The expressive face is animated by a large mouth, with a sly, satisfied smile. To judge by his outfit, this unidentified man appears to belong to the parliamentary bourgeoisie, so often caricatured at the time. E.B. and E.P.

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PL . 35

Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry (b. La Roche-sur-Yon, France, 1828 – d. Paris, 1886) Portrait de Charles Garnier (Portrait of Charles Garnier) Black chalk on paper 501 x 333 mm Inv. no. EBA 520 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: in the center, in black chalk: Baudry/Opéra/1874 (Baudry/Opera/1874) Provenance : Charles Garnier; bequest of Louise Garnier to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1922 Exhibitions: Mexico, Centro cultural arte contemporaneo, 1994, no. 4; Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 2008, no. 26

Paul Baudry’s portrait of the architect Charles Garnier attests both to the friendship uniting these two artists and to their collaboration on the Opéra Garnier, which the latter designed. In specific, it is a preparatory drawing for the interior of the grand foyer, whose decoration was officially entrusted to the painter in 1865. In the finished décor, Garnier appears in the right-hand corner of Mount Parnassus in a composition that features Apollo descending from his chariot and taking the lyre proffered him by the three graces. Influenced by Raphael’s School of Athens, which he rediscovered during a stay in Rome in 1864, Baudry depicts the architect in the company of his brother Ambroise and himself, surrounded by composers. In this preparatory sketch, Garnier is shown in profile, wearing a large jacket left casually open. He poses with a certain breeziness, his right fist on his hip. The architect appears in the same stance in Baudry’s painted portrait of him, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1869 and is currently at the Musée d’Orsay (Inv. no. RF2363/MV5903). His face is easily recognizable by the high cheekbones, dented nose, and angular contours. The artist did not draw his friend’s left hand, perhaps because Garnier had lost three of his fingers in 1871. The friendship connecting the two was forged during their stay as boarders at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Rome’s Villa Medici between 1849 and 1853. During this time, Garnier caricatured Baudry, known for his absent-mindedness and his dedication to work (ENSBA, Inv. no. PC41829-35). E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 36

Jean-Sully Mounet, known as Mounet-Sully (b. Bergerac, 1841 – d. Paris, 1916) Caricature de Mounet-Sully par lui-même (Self-portrait caricature) Graphite on paper 186 x 111 mm Inv. no. PC 41829-081 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie


Inscriptions: lower left, in graphite: Mounet Sully/par lui-même (Mounet Sully/by himself); on the right, in graphite: Mounet Sully fecit/17 Avril 78 (Made by Mounet Sully/ April 17, ’78) Provenance : Louise Garnier; a gift to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1898 Bibliogr aphy: E. Brugerolles, 2010, no. 76 Exhibitions: Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 2010–11, no. 76

The portfolio assembled by Louise Garnier, now at the École des Beaux-Arts, brings together drawings made by her husband the architect Charles Garnier, as well as by contemporary artists who complete the image she wanted to leave for posterity of the social circle in which she and her husband moved. A native of Gascony and a great theater actor, Jean-Sully Mounet, known as “Mounet-Sully,” trained at the Paris Conservatory. After his début at the Odéon Theater, he became a member of the ComédieFrançaise in 1874. A lover of Sarah Bernhardt, he excelled in tragic and dramatic roles. His booming voice and body language were particularly well adapted to this type of interpretation and ensured his unwavering success. His most famous role was as Oedipus Rex, which he performed in an 1881 production of Sophocles’s tragedy. The actor’s reputation and physical appearance exposed him early on to the ferocity of caricaturists. Leonetto Cappiello’s 1899 image of a performance of Oedipus Rex—made for the weekly humor magazine Le Rire (Laughter)—remains the best-known caricature of MounetSully (Musée d’Orsay, Inv. no. RF37346). Here, the actor caricatures himself, enlarging his features, as with a magnifying glass. Viewed frontally, the symmetry of his face is underscored and distinguished by a prominent nose and wall eyes (not seen in photographs of the time). We know of two other caricatures limned by the actor, one that again takes aim at his face, but in a less satirical manner, and one of Sarah Bernhardt (locations unknown). E.B. and H.V. de S.

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PL . 37

Henri Matisse (b. Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, 1869 – d. Nice, 1954) Portrait de Franz Villier (Portrait of Franz Villier) Charcoal on paper 425 x 322 mm Inv. no. EBA 1240 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts Photo: © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie Artwork: © 2015 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Inscriptions: lower right, in charcoal: H Matisse/oct. 46/à l’École nationale des Beaux-Arts (H Matisse/Oct. 46/to the École nationale des Beaux-Arts) Provenance : a gift of the artist to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1947, registration number, lower left: 51471 Exhibitions: Mexico, Centro cultural arte contemporaneo, 1994, no. 85

The portrait, for Matisse, is not a representation of an anatomical truth but a projection of the artist’s feelings in front of the “particular asymmetry” of a face whose rhythm guides the painter’s hand. In this charcoal drawing with its emphatic lines, he was inspired by the emaciated features, high cheekbones, and deep gaze of Franz Villier, the pen name of the avant-garde writer François Thomassin. From a bourgeois, Protestant family in Le Havre, Franz Villier got to know Jean Cocteau around 1932; in 1942, he made the acquaintance of Roger Martin du Gard in Nice and met Matisse in Venice. Audacious, ardent, generous, and immensely erudite, he was the author of many unpublished manuscripts, before publishing Vie et mort de Richard Winslow (The life and death of Richard Winslow) in 1947. This drawing can be associated with the series of portraits that Matisse made in the 1940s, intended for several books published in 1946 (one year before his famous Jazz): Visages (Faces), which featured poems by Pierre Reverdy; Les Lettres Portugaises (Letters of a Portuguese nun) by Mariana Alcoforado; and Choix de Pages de Paul Léautaud (Selected writings of Paul Léautaud) by André Rouveyre. Probably a preparatory drawing for the lithograph that served as a frontispiece for Vie et mort de Richard Winslow, this work was given to the École des Beaux-Arts by Matisse in March of 1947 along with four books, including Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal (Flowers of evil) and Visages. It was made at the same time as another portrait of Villier, which Matisse gave to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the spirit of his album Thèmes et variations (Themes and variations), published in 1943, the portrait in the Beaux-Arts’s collection perfectly illustrates Matisse’s graphic approach, which, after this charcoal drawing, is expressed in a series of much freer lithographed images of Villier “that are like perfumes emerging from this first matrix drawing” (letter from Henri Matisse to Marguerite Matisse). E.B. and H.L.

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PL . 38

Georg Baselitz (b. Deutschbaselitz, Germany, 1938 – ) Sans titre (Marcel Duchamp) (Untitled [Marcel Duchamp]) 2001 Pen, India ink, and wash of India ink on paper 778 x 575 mm Inv. no. EBA 5367 Paris, École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie © Georg Baselitz, 2015


Inscriptions: in the center, in pen and India ink: 28. V. 01 Provenance : gift of the artist to the École des Beaux-Arts in 2002

This drawing belongs to a set of three works that Georg Baselitz gave the École des Beaux-Arts, in 2002, on the occasion of an exhibition of his collection of mannerist engravings at the Chapelle des Petits Augustins. The two other pieces in the group are entitled Frida Kahlo and Marcel Duchamp and Sigmund Freud and a Maid. The drawing under consideration here features two motifs: a forearm and hand with an outstretched index finger and a profile bust of Marcel Duchamp. Engaging in a game of matching that recalls the effect objects make when reflected in water, both motifs are depicted twice—right-side up and upside down. Baselitz divides his work into two horizontal sections. The ground of the top portion is left in reserve; pen strokes outline the motifs, as though incised into the paper. The lower section, mostly covered in a wash, inverts the figures’ tones in the manner of solarized photographs. This technical choice, reminiscent of an approach the artist used in his 1998 Russenbilder, recalls Marcel Duchamp’s interest in photography and its reproductive techniques and pays homage to the curiosity of the man André Breton considered “the most intelligent of the century.” Duchamp was a frequent source of inspiration for Baselitz, particularly in his 2000 series Im Walde von Blainville. The artist depicts him, though, in an unflattering and unexpected light, especially given Duchamp’s elegance and sophistication. His only accessory a constricting and somewhat plebeian bowtie, Duchamp’s face appears craggy with pursed lips, his eyes stare vacantly into the void, and his straight hair falls limply to his neck. E.B.

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PL . 39

Fabien Mérelle (b. Fontenay-aux-Roses, France, 1981 – ) Abris (Shelter) 2014 Watercolor and India ink on paper 300 x 400 mm Private collection Courtesy of Fabien Mérelle & Praz-Delavallade


Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Jean-Michel Alberola, Fabien Mérelle has been using drawing ever since his first works. It was during a stay at the École des Beaux-Arts in Xi’an, China, however, that he honed his distinctive technique of gradually combining large strokes of watercolor with India ink. Standing out against expanses of blank, white paper, his characters (set in real-world or imaginary situations) are limned with an acerbic line of great finesse. The play of contrasts between the scene treated in a delicate palette of colors and tones and the whiteness of the sheet gives his works an enigmatic, at times unsettling, quality, which is at the heart of their originality. His 2010 series Untitled depicts homeless people surrounded by objects with a realistic and minute description that recalls sixteenth-century Dutch art. Abris (Shelter) belongs to a more intimate register of the artist’s work, who, after the birth of his daughter, started focusing on the family unit and the mixed feelings of fear and protectiveness that a parent experiences vis-à-vis his child. Emblematic of this attitude, the drawing shows Mérelle and his young daughter sitting under a duvet, his legs wrapped around her body. Clearly a kind of child’s game, the scene also references the Virgins of Mercy of fifteenth-century Italy, who protected kneeling believers under their ample cloaks. A place of peace and comfort, offering momentary isolation from the world, this narrow, sheltering space reinforces the intimate connection between the two people. The father, head lowered, embraces his child in an attitude of withdrawal, while his daughter seen frontally, faces the viewer with a look full of confidence. With great technical virtuosity, the artist renders the contrasts between the smooth flesh of the bodies and the synthetic material of the crumpled fabric, its multiple folds forming so many small cavities. The whole is executed in subtle shades of gray with the exception of the child’s black hair, which dominates the center of the composition. E.B.

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PL . 40

Claire Tabouret (b. Pertuis, France, 1981 – ) Les Débutantes (étude 1) (The Debutantes [study 1]) 2014 Acrylic on paper 610 x 460 mm Courtesy Galerie BUGADA & CARGNEL Courtesy Galerie BUGADA & CARGNEL © Martin Argyroglo


Claire Tabouret’s choice of the human figure and, more specifically, the portrait attests to its vitality for an emerging generation of artists. Tabouret engages the genre on two interrelated registers: she paints expansive group portraits, as large as 8.5 x 12.8 feet (260 x 390 centimeters), and then extracts individual figures from these compositions. She renders the latter in bust, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings. In her multi-figure paintings, the interdependent relationship between the individual and the group—as well between individuals within the group—are manifested by the importance given to hair and clothes. Attire emphasizes the connections that unify, at the risk of constricting evanescent bodies. Concerns regarding the place of the individual are particularly torturous during the sensitive ages: childhood, adolescence, and the transition to adulthood. These stages and the rituals of cohesion, initiation, and transformation that punctuate them fascinate Tabouret and propel her work. In this way, portraiture as the representation of the individual is inscribed within the context of a broader subject with symbolic and allegorical dimensions. The artist developed this process following a residency in Peking, China, in 2012, six years after receiving her diploma from the BeauxArts in Paris, in the studio of Dominique Gauthier. The portrait on paper Les Débutantes.1 follows from the group composition Les Débutantes. Both refer to the revisited tradition of the Debutante Ball, whose circle of invitees has expanded beyond aristocrats to include the sons and daughters of prominent families in the worlds of media, entertainment, politics, and industry. Tabouret’s drawing is inspired by images that originally appeared in the tabloids and are now circulated on the Internet. The model, a young woman drawn mid-bust, viewed from the front, challenges the spectator with the fixity of her gaze. Her tiara and her long hair swept to one side, revealing her neck and a modest neckline, are so many signs of femininity. The undulating and cascading lines of her hair seem to blend with the streaks that cross and extend beyond the bust to the edge of the paper. They reinforce the melancholy effect of this fluid representation. Prior to this work, Tabouret employed

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muted tones; here, she introduces vinyl fluorescent paint—green (for the halo surrounding the head) and yellow. Set against a white ground, these extraverted colors befit both the splendor of youth and the world of luxury. Far from affirming the uniqueness of one point of view, Les DÊbutantes.1 conveys the delicate tension between the desire to be seen and the desire to assert oneself that animate the fraught search for identity. K.A.

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EXHIBITIONS

Bern, 1959. Das 17. Jahrhundert in der französischen Malerei. Kunstmuseum Bern. Brussels, 1936. Ingres et Delacroix, dessins, pastels et aquarelles. Palais des Arts. La Rochelle, 1958. Réaumur et l’Académie de La Rochelle au XVIIIe siècle. La Rochelle: Bibliothèque municipale. Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne, 2007. Paul Baudry, 1828–1886: les portraits et les nus. Historial de la Vendée. London, 1932. Exhibition of french art: 1200–1900. Royal Academy of Arts. Mexico, 1994. De David à Matisse. Centro cultural arte contemporaneo. Montauban, 1967. Ingres et son temps. Musée Ingres. Nantes and Besançon, 2008–09. Simon Vouet, les années italiennes 1613–1627. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’archéologie de Besançon. Nantes, 2007. Hippolyte et Paul Flandrin: Paysages et portraits. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes. New York, London, and Washington, D.C., 1999. Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery, and National Gallery of Art. Paris and Lyon, 1984–85. Hippolyte, Auguste et Paul Flandrin: une fraternité picturale au XIXe siècle. Musée du Luxembourg and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Paris, 1913. David et ses élèves. Palais des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1921. Association franco-américaine d’expositions de peintures et de sculptures: Ingres. Chambre syndicale de la curiosité et des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1927. Notice des dessins, enluminures, manuscrits d’art français du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle tirés de la donation Jean Masson. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1931. Exposition de dessins français du XVIIe siècle de la collection Jean Masson. École des Beaux-Arts, fédération des artistes. Paris, 1933a. Art français des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Exposition de dessins de maîtres, livres, pièces d’archives et sculptures faisant partie des collections de l’École. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1933b. Louis de Carmontelle, dessins, aquarelles, gouaches, décors transparents animés, manuscrits, estampes. Galerie André Weil. Paris, 1934. David, Géricault et Ingres. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1937. Chefs d’œuvre de l’art français. Palais national des arts. Paris, 1946. Dessins estampes et ouvrages pour la grande Masse. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1965. L’art français au XVIIIe siècle. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1974–75. De David à Delacroix. La peinture française de 1774 à 1830. Grand Palais. Paris, 1975. Un siècle de dessins d’architecture à l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts (1790–1910). École des Beaux-Arts.

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Paris, 1987. Portraits d’artistes. Musée d’Orsay. Paris, 1989. Maîtres français—1550–1800. Dessins de la donation Mathias Polakovits à l’École des Beaux-arts. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1990. Charles Garnier. Musée d’Orsay. Paris, 2001. Le dessin en France au XVIIe siècle dans les collections de l’ école des Beaux-arts. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2006. Dessins de James Pradier. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2008. Paul Baudry. Dessinateur. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2009. Antoine-François Callet décorateur. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2010–11. L’œil et la plume: caricatures de Charles Garnier. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2011. Le dessin en partage. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2012a. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Dessinateur. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 2012b. Matisse Paires et séries. Centre Pompidou. Paris, 2013. De Poussin à Fragonard: hommage à Mathias Polakovits. École des Beaux-Arts. Paris, Los Angeles, and Hamburg, 1981–82. De Michel-Ange à Géricault, dessins de la collection Armand-Valton. École des Beaux-Arts, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Hamburger Kunsthalle. Paris, 1925. Charles Garnier. Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Prague, 1955. Exposition Ingres et Géricault. Prague. Prague, 1956. Francouzské umeni od Delacroix po Soucasnot. Narodni galerie. Rome, 1904. Exposition rétrospective à l’occasion de la visite de Monsieur le Président de la République. Société romaine des Beaux-Arts. Rome, 1968. Ingres in Italia. Mostra all’Accademia di Francia. Villa Medici. Rome, 2003. Maestà di Roma, da Napoleone all’unità d’Italia: D’Ingres à Degas, les artistes français à Rome. Villa Medici. Tobu, 1996. The Birth of Impressionism. Museum of Art. Tokyo and Osaka, 1981. Ingres. National Museum of Western Art and National Museum of Art. Toulouse and Nantes, 1997–98. Visages du Grand Siècle. Le portrait français sous le règne de Louis XIV (1660–1715). Musée des Augustins and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes. Toulouse, 1954. Le dessin toulousain de 1730 à 1800. Musée Paul Dupuy. Toulouse, 1997. François de Troy (1645–1730). Exposition de dessins français du XVIIe siècle de la collection Jean Masson. Musée Paul Dupuy. Washington, D.C., Cleveland, St. Louis, Cambridge, and New York, 1952–53. French Drawings: Masterpieces from Five Centuries. National Gallery of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, City Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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CONTRIBUTORS

Emmanuelle Brugerolles is General Heritage Curator in charge of the drawing collection of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.


BOARD OF DIRECTORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Co-Chairs

Lead support for Portraits from the École des Beaux-

Rhiannon Kubicka

Arts Paris comes from Canson. Additional support

Jane Dresner Sadaka

is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Robert Lehman Foundation, Ildeko and

Frances Beatty Adler

Gilbert Butler, Catherine and Arthur Williams,

Dita Amory

Diane Nixon, David Tobey, Elizabeth Eveillard,

Brad Cloepfil

the Kress Family Foundation, and Jill Newhouse.

Anita F. Contini Stacey Goergen Steven Holl Iris Z. Marden Nancy Poses Eric Rudin Galia Stawski Barbara Toll Isabel Stainow Wilcox Candace Worth

Emeritus Melva Bucksbaum Bruce W. Ferguson Michael Lynne George Negroponte Elizabeth Rohatyn Jeanne C. Thayer Executive Director Brett Littman



E D WA R D H A L L A M T U C K P U B L I C AT I O N P R O G R A M

This is number 121 of the Drawing Papers, a series of publications documenting The Drawing Center’s exhibitions and public programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing. Margaret Sundell Executive Editor Joanna Ahlberg Managing Editor Designed by AHL&CO / Peter J. Ahlberg, Kyle Chaille This book is set in Adobe Garamond Pro and Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk. It was printed by BookMobile in Minneapolis, MN.

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Essay by Emmanuelle Brugerolles Ellen Altfest, Will Cotton, Alex Katz, and Brett Littman in Conversation

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$20.00 US

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