Monday, January 11, 2016

European portraits from the era of the French Revolution

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of the Comtesse de la Châtre
1789
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portraits made of individual Europeans who lived through the decades of the French Revolution and who were in most cases able to preserve lives of fashionable privilege in spite of all the libertarian hoopla.

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Alexandre Charles Emmanuel de Crussol-Florensac
1787
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Madame Grand
1783
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Of the portrait above  "The sitter, Madame Grand, was a minor celebrity, a beautiful blond born in India, ill-educated but musical and clever, who would eventually become the wife of the minister and diplomat Talleyrand."

Of the portrait below – "Suzanne Le Peletier became a national celebrity at the age of eleven after the murder of her father, the French revolutionary Michel Le Peletier. Following his assassination, Suzanne was officially adopted by the French nation and given the title "daughter of the state.


Jacques Louis David
Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau
1804
Getty

Antoine-Jean Gros
Portrait of François Gérard
ca. 1790
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francisco Goya
Portrait of Sebastián Martínez y Pérez
1792
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francisco Goya
Portrait of General Antonio Ricardos
1793
Prado

Francisco Goya
Portrait of the Marchioness of Santa Cruz
1805
Prado

Henri-Pierre Danloux
Portrait drawing of a Young Woman in Profile
1783
Morgan Library

John James Masquerier
Portrait miniature of Rosoman Mountain
ca. 1806
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.)

French painter
Portrait miniature of an unknown woman
ca. 1790
Metropolitan Museum of Art

attributed to Jean-Baptiste Sambat
Portrait miniature of an unknown man
late 18th century
Metropolitan Museum of Art