Joseph Ducreux
(Nancy 1735 - 1802 Paris)
Portrait of an Aristocrat in Uniform
c. 1785-90
Oil on canvas
67 x 56.5 cm
The sitter is depicted in the uniform of a major in the fourth battalion of the Chasseurs des Cevennes in the period 1785-90.
We would like to thank Xavier Salmon of the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, for his assistance in background research on this painting.
Literature:
Georgette Lyon, Joseph Ducreux Premier Peintre de Marie-Antoinette, Paris 1958
Joseph Ducreux was born in Nancy, where he probably took his first lessons in painting. At what age he moved to Paris is not known. In Paris he was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Maurice Quentin de la Tour. He is reputed to have learned pastel techniques from the latter. In 1760 he married Philippine-Rose Cosse with whom he had six children. By 1762 he was already a highly successful society portrait painter - as his portraits of Mariette, de Broglie, de Noailles and de la Live de July testify. Ducreux was sent to Vienna in 1769 by Étienne François Duc de Choiseul, the statesman, to execute a portrait of Marie-Antoinette on her marriage to the future Louis XVI. In the following year he was appointed one of the Court portrait painters and Premier Peintre to Marie-Antoinette. Despite his close association with Marie-Antoinette he escaped the terror of the Revolution, perhaps because of his friendship with Jacques-Louis David. He was briefly in England in 1791 but returned to Paris before the end of the year.
Ducreux was primarily a portrait painter. His subtle character studies and his dramatic self portraits, sometimes exaggerated to the point of caricature, testify to his remarkable talents. These studies reveal the influence of the English caricaturists and Louis-Léopold Boilly's Grimaces. A Self-Portrait in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen showing the artist in the uniform of a naval officer provides an interesting comparison with the present painting.[1] Towards the end of the century, opinion turned against his self-portraits which were now viewed as offensive and vulgar.
It was not until the 1920s, with the staging of numerous exhibitions, that Ducreux's oeuvre regained the recognition that it enjoys today.
[1] See G. Lyon, op. cit., p. 178.