Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Painted Portraits of the 19th Century

Jean-Laurent Mosnier
Portrait of Princess Shakhovskaya
1806
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Henri-François Riesener
Portrait of Sofia Apraxina
1818-19
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Franz Xavier Winterhalter
Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna
1857
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Those therefore are mightily deceived, who esteeme a corrupt and defective kind of painting more popular and plausible, if it take pleasure in a childish licentiousnesse, if it be puffed up with an immoderate swelling, if it keepe a great stirre about idle and unprofitable undertakings, if it love to pranke with lightly fading flowers of vaine ornaments, if it entertaine abrupt and dangerous indeavors in stead of sublime and magnificent matters, if it runneth mad with a loose kind of dissolute libertie.  For though it be too true, that workes of this kinde prevaile most of all with the Vulgars, as being more agreeable unto their grosse and unexcised capacities, with a favourable shew of obvious and ready pleasure; such unadvised delights for all that, though never so naturall unto them, are very seldome constant.  Neither was it ever seen, that any artist got by such workes a durable admiration in the hearts of men, but an uncertaine approbation onely, accompanied with idle acclamations, and with a flying joy; seeing all that praise, as being blasted in the hearbe or in the floure, not attaine to any ripe or fruitfull maturitie; chiefely if those admirers chance in the meane time to meet with any other more perfect and truly absolute piece of worke, which maketh their former admiration presently vanish and come to nothing, by an admiration of better things. "Those who are taken with an outward shew of things," saith Quintilian, "judge sometimes that there is more beautie in them which are polled, shaved, smoothed, curled, and painted, than incorrupt Nature can give unto them: even as if pulchritude did proceed out of the corruption of manners."

– from Book Three (chapter three) of The Painting of the Ancients by Franciscus Junius, first published in English in 1638  edited by Keith Aldrich, Philipp Fehl and Raina Fel for University of California Press, 1991

Franz Xavier Winterhalter
Portrait of Princess Sophia Radziwill
1864
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jean-Jacques Henner
Study of a woman
ca. 1890-95
canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Roberto Fontana
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1875-95
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Gabriel Schachinger
Portrait of a man
1896
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Robert Lefèvre
Portrait of Count Andrey Bezborodko
1804
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Portrait of Count Nikolai Guryev
1821
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Horace Vernet
Self-portrait
1835
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Bénévent
 as Grand Chamberlain of the (Napoleonic) Empire 
1807
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Édouard Manet
Portrait of Mlle Isabelle Lemonnier
ca. 1879-80
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Carle Vernet
Equestrian portrait of Napoleon
ca. 1805-10
oil on canvas
private collection

Heinrich von Angeli
Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna
1874
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg