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拍品專文
Throughout the sixty-two years of his career, Hyacinthe Rigaud devoted his work as a portraitist to the task of capturing his models as closely as possible to the way they were in nature. In this respect he was not far removed from certain of his predecessors, such as Rembrandt, but he broke with the idealizing tendency which had been seen for several prior decades in the French portrait. Whatever praise one has for his contemporaries François de Troy and Largillière, one must admit that they had lost something of the freshness of Lefebvre, the naturalistic perfection of Philippe de Champaigne, in favour of fixed and crimson faces. Rigaud returned to a more realistic approach, taking inspiration from the Northern School. The famous mémorialiste Saint-Simon, sometimes so stingy with compliments, do not hesitate to admit in his memoirs that 'Rigault was then the first painter of Europe for the likeness of men and for a strong and durable paint'. This claim finds a validation in the present bust-length portrait of a young military man, painted without artifice or decorum, and almost caught in a kind of intimacy .
The sitter is shown turned towards the left, his face gently angled toward the spectator in keeping with the teachings of the Northern school, which diligently avoided the head should be turned aside or the body inclined or stooping, lest the work expose our incapacity' (Karel van Mander). Rigaud also thus pays homage to his spiritual master, Sir Anthony van Dyck, whose portraits always stand behind those of the Catalan painter. One cannot help but to identify in this work the full spiritedness of the Flemish master’s celebrated self-portrait, painted circa 1630 and widely known thanks to the prints derived from it. The clair-obscur is masterful, the bearing of the head is spirited and dignified, with a light but natural inclination back. As for the sitter's hair, treated 'au naturel' with a consummate lightness of brushwork, it deftly demonstrates the technical virtuosity the artist so ardently courted.
The portrait may well date from 1690s, a moment when Rigaud’s Paris studio was constantly beset by young soldiers who had served in the wars of Holland, under the command of the Dukes of Luxembourg and Villeroy. The blue sheen of the armour is characteristic, as is the typical lion’s head, riveted to the front of his breastplate as was the fashion of the time. Rigaud is known to have possessed several pieces of armour, which enabled him to study and to recreate in the quiet of his studio the subtle effects of light on the metal surface. A veritable symphony of blues and greys, punctuated with economically delicate touches of white to the yellow ribs and rivets. Everything is a pretext for the study of the play of shadows. The face, by contrast, is treated with great attention to detail, and the velvety flesh is reminiscent of the works of Rubens (for example the Mantua Self-Portrait with Friends, Munich, Alte Pinakotek). We find a similarly sensuous expression in the pretty face of the artist’s sister (Paris, Louvre), painted in 1695, aptly described by the historian Louis Hourticq as 'a plump brunette, her round face helmeted with beautiful dark hair in a bun [...] eyeing us askance, the lips ready to laugh, the dimpled flesh ready to bloom'. And what about his own self-portrait, called that of the 'red mantle' (Karlsruhe, Gemäldegalerie), which shares with this portrait of an officer the same spirit of conversation already praised by Dezallier d’Argenville?
Similar in its proportions to other works of the 1690s, the portrait of this young soldier is characteristic of Rigaud's most sensitive period. The softening of decorum, the striking touch of blue in the mantle, the almost sketched-in background, with all of its display of bravura brushwork, all conspire to place the work firmly amongst Rigaud's masterpieces, even though it has not been possible, for the present time, to match a name to the sitter’s face, at least so long as we lack the persuasive evidence of a comparable likeness.
We are grateful to Dominique Breme (dating the work to circa 1680) and to Stéphan Perreau (circa 1690) for independently suggesting an attribution to Hyacinthe Rigaud on the basis of photographs, and to M. Perreau for supplying this catalogue entry.
The sitter is shown turned towards the left, his face gently angled toward the spectator in keeping with the teachings of the Northern school, which diligently avoided the head should be turned aside or the body inclined or stooping, lest the work expose our incapacity' (Karel van Mander). Rigaud also thus pays homage to his spiritual master, Sir Anthony van Dyck, whose portraits always stand behind those of the Catalan painter. One cannot help but to identify in this work the full spiritedness of the Flemish master’s celebrated self-portrait, painted circa 1630 and widely known thanks to the prints derived from it. The clair-obscur is masterful, the bearing of the head is spirited and dignified, with a light but natural inclination back. As for the sitter's hair, treated 'au naturel' with a consummate lightness of brushwork, it deftly demonstrates the technical virtuosity the artist so ardently courted.
The portrait may well date from 1690s, a moment when Rigaud’s Paris studio was constantly beset by young soldiers who had served in the wars of Holland, under the command of the Dukes of Luxembourg and Villeroy. The blue sheen of the armour is characteristic, as is the typical lion’s head, riveted to the front of his breastplate as was the fashion of the time. Rigaud is known to have possessed several pieces of armour, which enabled him to study and to recreate in the quiet of his studio the subtle effects of light on the metal surface. A veritable symphony of blues and greys, punctuated with economically delicate touches of white to the yellow ribs and rivets. Everything is a pretext for the study of the play of shadows. The face, by contrast, is treated with great attention to detail, and the velvety flesh is reminiscent of the works of Rubens (for example the Mantua Self-Portrait with Friends, Munich, Alte Pinakotek). We find a similarly sensuous expression in the pretty face of the artist’s sister (Paris, Louvre), painted in 1695, aptly described by the historian Louis Hourticq as 'a plump brunette, her round face helmeted with beautiful dark hair in a bun [...] eyeing us askance, the lips ready to laugh, the dimpled flesh ready to bloom'. And what about his own self-portrait, called that of the 'red mantle' (Karlsruhe, Gemäldegalerie), which shares with this portrait of an officer the same spirit of conversation already praised by Dezallier d’Argenville?
Similar in its proportions to other works of the 1690s, the portrait of this young soldier is characteristic of Rigaud's most sensitive period. The softening of decorum, the striking touch of blue in the mantle, the almost sketched-in background, with all of its display of bravura brushwork, all conspire to place the work firmly amongst Rigaud's masterpieces, even though it has not been possible, for the present time, to match a name to the sitter’s face, at least so long as we lack the persuasive evidence of a comparable likeness.
We are grateful to Dominique Breme (dating the work to circa 1680) and to Stéphan Perreau (circa 1690) for independently suggesting an attribution to Hyacinthe Rigaud on the basis of photographs, and to M. Perreau for supplying this catalogue entry.