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The Artist in His Studio
Artist:
Nicolas de Largillière
(French, 1656-1746)
Date: ca. 1686
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Overall: 58 5/8 x 45 5/8 in. (148.9 x 115.9 cm)
Overall, Frame: 75 x 62 1/2 in. (190.5 x 158.8 cm)
Classification: European art
Credit Line: Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number: 71.513
Terms
- Self-portrait
- Artists
- Portraits
- Blue
- White
- Orange
- Gold
- Black
- Yellow
- Red
- Gray
- Baroque
- Paris
In Collection(s)
On view
DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting. It is an early self-portrait of the artist, who sits at the right with his palette and brushes. The scene is in the artist's studio. There are three gentlemen wearing wigs replete with long curls. They are expensively dressed in 17th century French costume and draped with richly colored fabric. The figure on the left of the canvas is standing, gesturing off to his right as he stares out of the canvas, at the viewer. The central figure, Flemish engraver Gerard Edelinck, is seated and looks over his right shoulder at him while pointing at a portrait print he created with his right hand. The figure on the right of the canvas is Nicolas De Largillierre, as indicated by his palette and brushes in his left hand. He is also holding up the aforementioned print with his right hand. The bottom foreground is in shadows, as the light from the windows primarily illuminates the three figures. On the floor there are sculpture pieces, one of a woman's head and another of a man crouched, as well as a rolled up scroll or parchment.
Exhibition History"N. de Largillierre," Petit Palais, Paris, May-June, 1928. (Exh. cat. no. 68).
"Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections parisiennes," Musée Carnavalet, Paris, Nov. - Dec., 1950. (Exhib. cat. no. 34).
"Cent portraits d'hommes du XIVe siècle à nos jours," Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 1952. (Exhib. cat. no. 49a).
"Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Seattle Art Museum; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Art Institute; St. Louis City Art Museum; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 2, 1956 - April 14, 1957. (Exh. cat. no. 61).
"Paintings from Private Collections. Summer Loan Exhibition," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1958.
"French Masters of the Eighteenth Century," Finch College Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 27 - April 7, 1963. (Exhib. cat. no. 3).
"Vouet to Rigaud. French Masters of the Seventeenth Century," Finch College Museum of Art, New York, April 20 - June 18, 1967. (Exhib. cat. no. 52).
"Gods and Heroes, Baroque Images of Antiquity," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, Oct. 30, 1968 - Jan. 4, 1969. (Exhib. cat. no. 20).
"Homage to the Louvre," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, May - Sept., 1976.
"Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, June 12 - Sept. 5, 1977. (Exhib. cat. no. 17).
"Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait," Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Sept. 19 - Nov. 15, 1981.
"French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum," North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, May 31 - Sept. 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, Nov. 6, 1986 - Jan. 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 8).
"Nicolas de Largillierre," Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, France, October 13, 2003 - January 31, 2004.
"America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting," National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., May 21 – August 20, 2017.
"Chefs-d'oeuvre des collections parisiennes," Musée Carnavalet, Paris, Nov. - Dec., 1950. (Exhib. cat. no. 34).
"Cent portraits d'hommes du XIVe siècle à nos jours," Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 1952. (Exhib. cat. no. 49a).
"Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Seattle Art Museum; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Art Institute; St. Louis City Art Museum; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 2, 1956 - April 14, 1957. (Exh. cat. no. 61).
"Paintings from Private Collections. Summer Loan Exhibition," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1958.
"French Masters of the Eighteenth Century," Finch College Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 27 - April 7, 1963. (Exhib. cat. no. 3).
"Vouet to Rigaud. French Masters of the Seventeenth Century," Finch College Museum of Art, New York, April 20 - June 18, 1967. (Exhib. cat. no. 52).
"Gods and Heroes, Baroque Images of Antiquity," Wildenstein Gallery, New York, Oct. 30, 1968 - Jan. 4, 1969. (Exhib. cat. no. 20).
"Homage to the Louvre," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, May - Sept., 1976.
"Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, June 12 - Sept. 5, 1977. (Exhib. cat. no. 17).
"Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait," Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Sept. 19 - Nov. 15, 1981.
"French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum," North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, May 31 - Sept. 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, Nov. 6, 1986 - Jan. 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 8).
"Nicolas de Largillierre," Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, France, October 13, 2003 - January 31, 2004.
"America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting," National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., May 21 – August 20, 2017.
Label textNicolas de Largillière
French, 1656-1746
The Artist in His Studio, ca. 1686
Oil on canvas
How many portraits do you see here? There are actually five. The artist sits on the right with his palette and brushes in hand. The engraver Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707) sits next to him, and the two hold up a portrait print that Edelinck made from Largillière’s original painting (displayed at far right). The man standing behind them is Pierre Bernard, who commissioned the engraving. Eager to own images of famous contemporaries, many Frenchmen in Largillière’s day collected prints like this one. As celebrated here, collaborations of portrait painters and engravers could be immensely profitable. Such arrangements also brought art images to a wide audience at affordable prices.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.513
French, 1656-1746
The Artist in His Studio, ca. 1686
Oil on canvas
How many portraits do you see here? There are actually five. The artist sits on the right with his palette and brushes in hand. The engraver Gérard Edelinck (1640–1707) sits next to him, and the two hold up a portrait print that Edelinck made from Largillière’s original painting (displayed at far right). The man standing behind them is Pierre Bernard, who commissioned the engraving. Eager to own images of famous contemporaries, many Frenchmen in Largillière’s day collected prints like this one. As celebrated here, collaborations of portrait painters and engravers could be immensely profitable. Such arrangements also brought art images to a wide audience at affordable prices.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.513
Published References
Nicolas de Largillierre, 1656-1746. _Exposition N. de Largillierre_. Paris: Éditions de la Gazette des Beaux-arts. 1928. No. 62.
C. Gronowski. "L'Exposition de Largillière au Petit Palais," _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_. vol. 17. 06/1928: 325-326.
Exhibition catalog. _Chefs-D'Oeuvre des Collections Parisiennes_. Paris: Musée Carnavelet. 1950. No. 34.
Bertina S. Manning. _Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.: An Exhibition Organized by the Portland Art Museum, Oregon_. Portland: Portland Art Association. 1956. No. 61.
Eric M. Zafran and Mario Amaya. _Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr._. Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville. 1977. No. 17.
_Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait_ exhibition catalogue. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1981, no. 45.
Chrysler Museum. _Selections from the Permanent Collection: The Chrysler Museum_. Norfolk, VA: Chrysler Museum of Art. 1982: 36.
Georges de Lastic. "Largillierre et ses modeles," _L'Oeil_.. No. 323. 06/1982: pp. 24-31, 78-79. *This author, in this article and the next, identified the sitter as the artist himself, thereby ending years of scholarly debate.
Georges de Lastic. "Largillierre á Montréal," _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_. Sixth series, vol. 102. July/August issue, 1983: 37. *This author, in this article and his 1982 article, identified the sitter as the artist himself, thereby ending years of scholarly debate.
Jefferson C. Harrison, Jr. _French Paintings from the Chrysler Museum_, exhibition catalogue. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, and Birmingham Museum of Art, 1986-87. *See for further references.
Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, 1991, 50, #39.
Dominique Brême, "Nicolas de Largillierre," _Doessier de l'Art_. Dijon, France: Les Éditions Faton SA, 1998: 3 (det.), 6-7.
Merilyn Savill, "The Triple Portrait of Pierre Bernard, Gérard Edelinck and Nicolas de Largillière and the Debate in the French Academy in 1686 over the Status of Engravers," _Melbourne Art Journal_ 5 (2001): 41-52.
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, _Old Masters in Context 2000-2006_ (New York: Samuel H. Kress Foundation. 2006), 86.
Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 32, fig. 25. ISBN: 978-0-940744-72-1
Philip Conisbee, et al., _French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century_, (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2009), 300, fig. 1. Distributed by Princeton University Press.
Yuriko Jackall, et. al., _America Collects: Eighteenth-Century French Painting_, (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art. 2017), pg. 217, plate 42.
Provenance
Comte de Montreuil, Paris, by 1928; Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge, Paris, by 1952, to 1954; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. by 1956; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, 1971.
Catalogue EntryNicolas de Largillierre
French, 1656-1746
The Artist in His Studio, ca. 1686
Oil on canvas, 58½" x 45½"
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 71.513
References: _Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait_, exhib. cat., Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1981, no. 45; Harrison, _CM_, 1986, no. 8.
Like his friends and artistic rival Hyacinth Rigaud (no. 41), Largillierre was one of France's premier portrait painters during the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In fact, as portraitists, Rigaud and Largillierre virtually divided the moneyed classes of Paris between them. Rigaud drew his subjects mainly from aristocracy. Largillierre drew his from the city's upper middle class - from the ranks of its lawyers, government bureaucrats, financiers and, as seen in the splendid portrait group in The Chrysler Museum, from its artistic community as well. For these well placed sitters Largillierre devised a highly flattering portrait type, one that blended the grandeur and refinements of contemporary court portraiture with the penetrating naturalism of the middle-class portrait.
_The Artist in His Studio_ is among the most famous and most complex of Largillierre's early masterpieces. It was painted around 1686, the year he joined the Académie Royale, and it contains what may well be Largillierre's earliest self-portrait. The artist, roughly thirty years old, sits at right in a gilded chair, his palette and brushes in hand. Seated beside him in his studio is the Flemish engraver Gerard Edelinck (1640-1707), who moved from Antwerp to Paris in 1666 and soon became a leading printmaker in the French capital. Edelinck regularly made engravings from Largillierre's portraits, and in the Chrysler painting he and Largillierre display one of these portrait prints, a 1685 engraving of the royal magistrate Thomas-Alexandre Morant (1616-1692). The source for Edelinck's engraving -- Largillierre's painted portrait of Morant -- is displayed on the easel at left. (A related portrait of Morant by Largillierre is today in the Musee National du Chateau du Versailles.) The man who stands behind Edelinck gesturing toward the easel has yet to be identified, but he may be Pierre Bernard, who commissioned Edelinck's engraving of Morant.
Eager to own images of famous contemporaries, many Frenchmen in Largillierre's day collected prints like the one illustrated here. The commercial collaboration of portrait painter and engraver, therefore, could be immensely profitable to both parties. It also brought art images to a mass audience at affordable prices. In _The Artist in His Studio_ Largillierre documents the production of Edelinck's print from his own portrait of Morant. In the process, he celebrates the collaborative enterprise of painter, engraver and patron, the kind of joint professional effort that enriched his own career and was so vital to the artistic life of seventeenth-century Paris.
In Largillierre's day the instructional curriculum of the Académie Royale stressed drawing and the study of classical sculpture as key components of an artist's education. Largillierre endorses these principles in the still life at the lower left of the painting. There we see a portfolio of drawings, a roll of paper and casts of three antique sculptures: the Belvedere Torso, the Vatican _Antinoüs_ and a bust of Athena. With these objects the artist pays tribute to the academic practices that, in his time, underlay the art of both painter and engraver and led ultimately to the creation of works like the portrait and print of Morant.
Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, 1991, 50, #39.
French, 1656-1746
The Artist in His Studio, ca. 1686
Oil on canvas, 58½" x 45½"
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 71.513
References: _Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait_, exhib. cat., Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1981, no. 45; Harrison, _CM_, 1986, no. 8.
Like his friends and artistic rival Hyacinth Rigaud (no. 41), Largillierre was one of France's premier portrait painters during the late-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In fact, as portraitists, Rigaud and Largillierre virtually divided the moneyed classes of Paris between them. Rigaud drew his subjects mainly from aristocracy. Largillierre drew his from the city's upper middle class - from the ranks of its lawyers, government bureaucrats, financiers and, as seen in the splendid portrait group in The Chrysler Museum, from its artistic community as well. For these well placed sitters Largillierre devised a highly flattering portrait type, one that blended the grandeur and refinements of contemporary court portraiture with the penetrating naturalism of the middle-class portrait.
_The Artist in His Studio_ is among the most famous and most complex of Largillierre's early masterpieces. It was painted around 1686, the year he joined the Académie Royale, and it contains what may well be Largillierre's earliest self-portrait. The artist, roughly thirty years old, sits at right in a gilded chair, his palette and brushes in hand. Seated beside him in his studio is the Flemish engraver Gerard Edelinck (1640-1707), who moved from Antwerp to Paris in 1666 and soon became a leading printmaker in the French capital. Edelinck regularly made engravings from Largillierre's portraits, and in the Chrysler painting he and Largillierre display one of these portrait prints, a 1685 engraving of the royal magistrate Thomas-Alexandre Morant (1616-1692). The source for Edelinck's engraving -- Largillierre's painted portrait of Morant -- is displayed on the easel at left. (A related portrait of Morant by Largillierre is today in the Musee National du Chateau du Versailles.) The man who stands behind Edelinck gesturing toward the easel has yet to be identified, but he may be Pierre Bernard, who commissioned Edelinck's engraving of Morant.
Eager to own images of famous contemporaries, many Frenchmen in Largillierre's day collected prints like the one illustrated here. The commercial collaboration of portrait painter and engraver, therefore, could be immensely profitable to both parties. It also brought art images to a mass audience at affordable prices. In _The Artist in His Studio_ Largillierre documents the production of Edelinck's print from his own portrait of Morant. In the process, he celebrates the collaborative enterprise of painter, engraver and patron, the kind of joint professional effort that enriched his own career and was so vital to the artistic life of seventeenth-century Paris.
In Largillierre's day the instructional curriculum of the Académie Royale stressed drawing and the study of classical sculpture as key components of an artist's education. Largillierre endorses these principles in the still life at the lower left of the painting. There we see a portfolio of drawings, a roll of paper and casts of three antique sculptures: the Belvedere Torso, the Vatican _Antinoüs_ and a bust of Athena. With these objects the artist pays tribute to the academic practices that, in his time, underlay the art of both painter and engraver and led ultimately to the creation of works like the portrait and print of Morant.
Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, 1991, 50, #39.