1939.89: Portrait of a Man

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1939.89

People

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French (Paris 1699 - 1779 Paris)

Title

Portrait of a Man

Other Titles

Former Title: Presumed Portrait of the Painter Jean-Jacques Bachelier

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

1773

Culture

French

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/298500

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Pastel on tan laid paper with blue fibers, wrapped around and adhered to canvas

Dimensions

54.8 × 44.2 cm (21 9/16 × 17 3/8 in.)
frame (including wreath at top): 90 × 65 cm (35 7/16 × 25 9/16 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• Signed: lower right, black pastel: Chardin / 1773
• inscription: signed and dated, lower right, black pastel: Chardin / 1773
• watermark: none
• label: old mount, black ink: CHARDIN / Portrait du peintre Bachelier . / Il est en costume de trésorier de l’Académie de / Saint-Luc. / Signé en bas et a droite : Chardin 1773. / Haut., 54 cent.; larg., 45 cent. / (Vente Laperlier, 1879.) / Cité dans l’Art au XVIIIe [“e” in superscript] siècle, le E. et J. de Goncourt.
• label: old mount, black ink: Chardin / 3181 / 744

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Jean-Antoine Vassal de Saint-Hubert, Paris; his sale, Remy, Paris, 29 March-13 April 1779, lot 251 (as "Portrait of a Man"); his estate sale, Remy-Brusley, Paris, 24 April 1783-5 May 1783, lot 101, sold; to Lepeintre (or Lepautre); Laurent Laperlier, Paris; his estate sale, Drouot (George-Delestre), Paris, 17-21 February 1879, lot 48 (as "Portrait of the Painter, Jean-Jacques Bachelier"); Étienne-Edmond de Riel, Baron de Beurnonville, Paris; his sale, Féral-George-Petit-Pillet, Paris, 9-16 May 1881, lot 27; possibly Antoine-François Marmontel, Paris; sale, Drouot (Brame-Boulland), Paris, 25-26 January 1883, lot 61; Antoine-François Marmontel, Paris; his estate sale, Drouot (Brame-Tual), Paris, 28-29 March 1898, lot 17; Sigismond Bardac, Paris; his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 10-11 May 1920, lot 17; Galerie Wildenstein, Paris (by 1921), sold; to Grenville Lindall Winthrop, New York, gift; to Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Grenville L. Winthrop, Class of 1886, inv. no. 1939.89

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Grenville L. Winthrop, Class of 1886

Accession Year

1939

Object Number

1939.89

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

• Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, L'art du dix-huitième siècle, A. Quantin (Paris, 1880-1882), vol. 1, p. 118 (as "Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier")
• Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt, L’art du XVIIIe siècle, Bibliothèque Charpentier (Paris, 1881), p. 175
• Armand Dayot and Jean Guiffrey, J.-B Siméon Chardin, H. Piazza (Paris, 1907), pp. 20, 26-27, 45
• Georges Wildenstein, Chardin, Les Beaux-Arts (1933), cat. no. 645, p. 203
• “Report of the William Hayes Fogg Art Museum, 1938-39", Annual Report (Fogg Art Museum), ed. Edward Waldo Forbes, Fogg Art Museum (1938-1939), pp. 1-24, p. 16
• "Gift of Grenville L. Winthrop, Class of 1886", Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum, ed. Edward Waldo Forbes, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1939), vol. 9, no. 1, November, p. 19, p. 19
• Theodore Rousseau Jr., “A Pastel Portrait by J. B. S. Chardin", Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum (1940), vol. 9, no. 3, November, pp. 42-44, pp. 42-44
• Francis Jourdain, Chardin, 1699-1779, ed. Georges Besson, Braun (Paris, 1953)
• John D. Morse, Old Masters in America: A Comprehensive Guide, Rand McNally (Chicago, 1955), p. 25
• Georges Wildenstein, Chardin, Manesse (Zurich, 1963), cat. no. 370, pp. 217-18 (as "Presumed Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier in the Robes as Treasurer of the Academy of Saint-Luc")
• Georges Wildenstein and Daniel Wildenstein, Chardin, Cassirer (Oxford, 1969), cat. no. 370, pp. 224-25
• Jean Cailleux, "Three Portraits in Pastel and Their History", The Burlington Magazine, The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd. (London, 1971), vol. 113, no. 824, November, pp. i-vi, p. v
• Pierre Rosenberg, ed., Chardin, 1699-1779, exh. cat., Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, 1979), pp. 361, 367 (as "Presumed Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier")
• Pierre Rosenberg, L’opera completa di Chardin, Rizzoli (Milan, 1983), cat. no. 193, p. 113 (as "Portrait of a Man")
• Marianne Roland Michel, Le dessin en couleurs: aquarelles, gouaches, pastels, 1720-1830, exh. cat., Galerie Cailleux (Paris, 1984), under cat. no. 11, n.p. (as "Presumed Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier")
• Suzanne Folds McCullagh and Pierre Rosenberg, “‘The Supreme Triumph of the Old Painter’: Chardin’s Final Work in Pastel", Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1985), vol. 12, no. 1, Autumn, pp. 42-59, pp. 50-51, 59-n.37-38 (as "Portrait of a Man")
• Philip Conisbee, Chardin, Phaidon (Oxford, 1985), p. 225
• Kristin A. Mortimer and William G. Klingelhofer, Harvard University Art Museums: A Guide to the Collections, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press (Cambridge and New York, 1986), cat. no. 274, p. 234 (as "Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier")
• Pierre Cabanne, L’art du XVIIIe siècle, Bordas (Paris, 1987), p. 171 (as "Presumed Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier in the Robes as Treasurer of the Academy of Saint-Luc")
• David Irwin, “Art Versus Design: The Debate, 1760-1860", Journal of Design History, Oxford University Press (UK) (1991), vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 219-32, p. 226
• Marianne Roland Michel, Chardin, Hazan (Paris, 1994), p. 226
• Marianne Roland Michel, Chardin, Thames & Hudson (New York, 1996), p. 226
• "Drawings on Exhibition", Drawing, ed. Margaret Mathews-Berenson, Broadaxe Press (New York, 1998), vol. 20, no. 1, Fall, pp. 22-25, p. 22
• Edward Saywell, Behind the Line: The Materials and Techniques of Old Master Drawings, Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, 1998), vol. 6, no. 2, cat. no. 45, pp. 29, 35
• Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Jean-Francois Méjanès, Alain Mérot, Margaret Morgan Grasselli, Sophie Raux-Carpentier, William W. Robinson, Marianne Roland Michel, and Pierre Rosenberg, Mastery & Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exh. cat., ed. Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 59, 72-n.19 (as "Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier")
• Pierre Rosenberg and Renaud Temperini, Chardin: suivi du catalogue des œuvres, Flammarion (Paris, 1999), cat. no. 196, pp. 158-59, 162, 285 (as "Portrait of a Man")
• Chikashi Kitazaki and Mina Oya, ed., Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, exh. cat., National Museum of Western Art (Ueno, 2002), p. 30
• Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), p. 34
• Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, Unicorn Press (London, 2006), p. 122 (as "Presumed Portrait of the Artist, Jean-Jacques Bachelier")
• Melissa Percival, Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination, Ashgate Publishing (Farnham and Burlington, 2012), pp. viii, 34, 121, 155-n.1, 186 (as "Man in Spanish Costume")
• Axel Hémery and Melissa Percival, ed., Figures de fantasie du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, exh. cat., Somogy (Paris, 2015), p. 25
• Eik Kahng, “Greuze’s ‘The Dreamer’: Portrait, Tronie, or Fantasy Figure?", French Art of the Eighteenth Century, The Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture Series at the Dallas Museum of Art, ed. Heather MacDonald, Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, 2016), pp. 124-39, pp. 129, 138-n.15 (as "Presumed Portrait of the Artist, Jacques-André-Joseph-Camelot Aved")
• Louis-Antoine Prat, Le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle, Somogy (Paris, 2017), pp. 396, 719
• Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, website, Pastels & Pastellists, 2018, cat. no. J.219.133, repr.; http://pastellists.com/Articles/Chardin.pdf [accessed July 7, 2021]
• Eik Kahng, "Chardin's Pastels", nonsite.org (https://nonsite.org/chardins-pastels/, May 9, 2021), discussed and repr. [https://nonsite.org/chardins-pastels/; accessed 11-8-21]
• Edouard Kopp, Elizabeth M. Rudy, and Kristel Smentek, ed., Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2022), pp. 183-186, repr. p. 183 as fig. 1
• Alvin L. Clark, Jr. and Edouard Kopp, French Drawings from the Age of Claude, Poussin, Watteau, and Fragonard: Highlights from the Collection of the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2022), cat. no. 61, repr.

Exhibition History

• Behind the Line: The Materials and Techniques of Old Master Drawings, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 10/03/1998 - 12/30/1998

Verification Level