Invention, Resemblance, and Fragonard's Portraits de Fantaisie

The po rtraitist has no tro uble keeping fo o d o n his table; that is to say that there is not o ne wealthy bo urgeo is no t being co quettish eno ugh to want to o wn a portrait o f herself." 1 What this witty o bserver o f the co ntempo rary French art scene in 1728 ironically attacks here reflects the ambivalent po si tion of portraiture in the eighteenth century. Quantitatively meaningf ul, it nevertheless occupied only a middling position in the academic hierarchy of genres. Particularly with the attempts of the incipient neoclassical style to leave the subjects of the time behind (which were considered f rivolous) did the number of people grow who accused portraiture of enjoying an undue boost in popularity, especially compared to history painting. The public ad ministration of art felt compelled to compensate f or the private penchant by of f icially limiting its promotion. 2 Ultimately, however, this had little ef f ect.

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 2024

According to Diderot, ressemblance was a central quality in eighteenth-century portraiture-and yet it was ultimately less important than the particular manner of execution, le faire. Bold brushstrokes, art critics agreed in Paris around 1750, not only enliven the subject, but also testify to the artistic enthousiasme, the genius of a painter. While Maurice-Quentin de La Tour perfectly served this ideal with his bravura pastel portraits, his greatest rival at the time, Jean-Étienne Liotard, decidedly turned against this ideal. Concentrating on Liotard's programmatic painting The Breakfast (exhibited in the Académie de Saint-Luc's Salon of 1752), this article compares the different pictorial concepts of Liotard and La Tour, illuminates the contemporary discussion on execution, and ultimately asks about the strategies Liotard devised in order not to be overlooked as the author of his paintings despite his smooth finish.

Eighteenth-Century Life, 2023

A number of years ago, Mark Hallett published an important and influential essay on Joshua Reynolds, Royal Academy exhibitions, and eighteenthcentury British spectatorship that should have become an inflection point for scholars of the portrait.1 The essay focused on a single painting from 1784, Reynolds's equestrian portrait of the Prince of Wales. The essay's larger purpose was to suggest a different way of thinking about how eighteenth-century paintings functioned as a result of their appearance at Somerset House. Using Edward Burney's detailed renderings of the Great Room, Hallett argued that viewers at the time were fluent in the language of display, so much so that they could "read the walls" and understand the picture in question as participating in-and in fact, being defined by-a variety of different visual "narratives," some artistic, some social, some political, all of which derived from the logic of the hang. Moreover, he argued, dominant narratives from previous years could also come back into play, the speech acts from any one exhibition thus tied to those before and after. Eloquent about the forces at work "beyond the boundaries of individual canvases," Hallett nevertheless ignored the radical implications of his own essay and opted instead for a polite request that we remember that "works of art were often defined by the company they kept" (581, 604).

By the 1730s a new generation of French painters had developed a renewed understanding of history painting. This reconceptualization undermined the foundations of Albertian historia and the underpinnings it had for so long provided for the practice and theory of French grand genre. Representing figures defined by dramatic actions and narrative relationships between them was replaced by a mode of presenting figures in quieter states of bodily and psychological introspection. This naturally recalls Michael Fried’s notion of ‘absorption’, used to define a pictorial aesthetic that emerged in the mid-eighteenth century. This essay maps the earlier appearance of such ‘absorptive states’, where the valorization of inner mental activities coincided with a growing singularization of the figures within a composition. This phenomenon, it is argued, was the result of an evolution in the academic practice of life drawing. This led to an even-greater attention to the figuration of the human body in painting as the manifestation of an interior state, becoming the central organizing principle of history painting.

The Art Book, 2007

2008

Keywords: portrait, caricature, hairdo, fashion, luxury, consumption, power-negotiations Abstract: Known, among others, as a "culture of appearances" (Roche 1989), the eighteenth century is a time of accelerated individual comfort and the age of luxury par excellence, combining "leisure and pleasure" (Margetson 1970). As the London of the day goes French, in an effect of "fearful symmetry" to the inceptive Anglomania on the Continent, the secular portrait becomes an asset in its own right, with "hanging the head" (Pointer 1993) as a current legitimation practice. Pride of place is held by fabulous hairdos out of tune with any sense of proportion and, as such, favourite caricature subjects. In its historical embeddedness of the same kind and character as genre painting and the novel, the caricature portrait confirms the Blumenberg-Lowith debate on the (il)legitimacy of modernity, or what I call "the collapse of the isomorphic model". ...

„Journal of Art Historiography”, 17, 2017, s. 1-35, 2017

Chapel, Cracow Cathedral, photo: Wikimedia Commons In 1586, Anne Jagiellon, queen regnant of Poland and grand duchess of Lithuania, the last Polish ruler of the Jagiellon dynasty, sent her portrait in coronation robes from Warsaw to Cracow Cathedral (fig. 1). The portrait was painted shortly after the coronation ceremony and her marriage to Stephen Bathory in the Cracow Cathedral (1 st May 1576) and shows the queen full-length, wearing a crown and holding a sceptre and orb in her hands. Anne is presented here in the full splendour of her royal status: she wears a white dress adorned with bands of golden embroidery with jewels sewn in, and around her neck are a costly pendant and chains made of gold and pearls. The queen's presence, however, is underscored not only through the rendering of the coronation insignia and an emphasis on rich clothing but also through the faithfully depicted countenance that reveals the austere features of her actual appearance. Although the portrait was undoubtedly created with

The Question of Portraiture from the Renaissance to the 20th Century

Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2009

Der Arkadenhof der Universität Wien und die Tradition der Gelehrtenmemoria in Europa, 2018

A catalog printed in Paris in 1766 advertised the sale of paintings, prints, shells, and other curiosities from the collection of the recently deceased Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville, identified on the title page as a maître des comptes and a member of the prestigious scientific societies of London and Montpellier [ ]. 1 Dezallier was born into a family of booksellers in Paris on 1 July 1680. He studied with the foremost experts on drawing, engraving, the history of art, and connoisseurship, including the important art theoretician Roger de Piles and the prolific engraver Bernard Picart. 2 He also learned gardening from the celebrated architect and garden designer Alexandre Le Blond. 3 Dezallier traveled to Italy and lived there for over two years, becoming familiar with what were considered the two great corpuses of art, ancient and modern. After returning to Paris in 1716, he gained a series of positions in the royal administration, serving as secrétaire du roi, then maître des comptes, and later a conseiller du roi. Over the years he amassed a very significant collection that included paintings, drawings, prints, and shells, and participated in correspondence and exchange networks with collectors and scholars throughout Europe. 4 After Dezallier d'Argenville's death in 1765, his collection was auctioned by Pierre Remy, one of the foremost Parisian art dealers at the time-a testament to Dezallier's cultural standing and to the value of the collection. 5

The Yale Review, 2003

L’Esprit créateur, 2019

This introduction provides a historical and theoretical mapping of the rise of portraitomanie in nineteenth-century France and an overview of relevant approaches in intermedial studies. The notable physical, stylistic, and functional diversity of the portrait in the nineteenth century, enabled by the emergence of new media and increasing hybridization, makes it particularly important to trans- and inter-medial perspectives, as well as to material culture, alongside more traditional French Studies ones. In addition to this contextualization the introduction provides short summaries of the special issue’s articles.