French Impressionist Portraits Beyond the Famous Names
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Part of our series on collecting portraiture in our Collecting Guides. See also our pillar guide to Collecting 18th-Century French Portraits and our landscape guide to French Impressionist Landscape Painting Beyond the Famous Names.
Edgar Degas, In a Café (L'Absinthe), 1875-1876. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. The man with the pipe is the painter Marcellin Desboutin. Image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
The man with the pipe in Degas's In a Café, one of the most famous paintings in the Musée d'Orsay, is not an actor or an anonymous model. He is Marcellin Desboutin: painter, printmaker, and a central figure of the bohemian circle at the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes where the Impressionists gathered. Degas painted him. Manet painted him. And Desboutin painted, all his life, with a portraitist's eye that his famous friends respected.
His case makes the point of this article. Around every celebrated name of French modern painting stood accomplished portraitists, friends, exhibitors, students and rivals of the masters, whose work carries the same air and the same period but not the same prices. We made this argument for landscapes in our guide to French Impressionist landscapes beyond the famous names. It holds at least as strongly for portraits.
Marcellin Desboutin: The Man from L'Absinthe
Desboutin (1823-1902) lived one of the great bohemian lives of the century: an aristocrat who ran through a fortune, settled in the Nouvelle-Athènes circle, exhibited with the Impressionists in 1876, and became one of the finest drypoint engravers of his time. His portraits, in oil and in print, recorded the artistic Paris of his day, and his sitters included the painters and writers he drank with.
From our collection: Marcellin Desboutin, Portrait of a Young Boy, Signed
A signed oil portrait of a young boy by the man Degas chose to embody bohemian Paris. Owning a Desboutin means owning a painting by a documented member of the first Impressionist circle, a figure literally inside one of the movement's most famous pictures.
Jules-Alexandre Grün: Belle Époque Paris
Grün (1868-1938) was one of the defining image-makers of Belle Époque Paris, celebrated for his cabaret posters and his large, glittering scenes of Parisian society, and a regular of the official Salon. His portraits combine academic training with the loose, lit touch of the era.
From our collection: Jules-Alexandre Grün, Portrait of the Painter's Son, Signed
A signed and intimate subject from a painter better known for crowds and footlights: Grün's own son, painted with the affection reserved for family and presented in a gilt frame. Portraits of the artist's family have a particular appeal for collectors, since the painter answered to no client but himself.
The Portrait After 1900: Character Over Ceremony
By the 20th century the portrait had shed its official duties. Photography handled the record; painting was free to pursue character, mood and style. The portraits of this era are personal by design, and the painters who made them, well trained, widely exhibited, remembered today mainly by specialists, offer some of the best value in figurative painting.
From our collection: Corchón y Diaque, Portrait of a Woman, Signed, 1890s
A signed 1890s portrait on wood panel by the Spanish painter Corchón y Diaque (1853-1925), painted with the fluent brush of the fin de siècle. Spanish portraiture of this generation, working in the wake of the great Madrid and Paris salons, remains notably undervalued.
From our collection: Max Moreau, Portrait of a Woman with a Necklace, Signed, Oval Format
An oval portrait by the Belgian painter Max Moreau (1902-1992), whose former home in Granada is preserved today as a museum. The oval format, a deliberate nod to the 18th-century tradition, frames a thoroughly modern face: the old genre carried forward into a new century.
From our collection: André Chochon, Portrait of a Woman with Yellow Gloves, Signed, 1960s
A signed 1960s portrait by the French painter André Chochon (1910-2005): a woman in a feathered hat and yellow gloves, painted in a late Impressionist manner and set in an ornate gilded frame. Proof that the French portrait tradition kept its charm, and its wit, deep into the 20th century.
From our collection: Ramon Dilley, Portrait of a Family, Signed and Dated 1973
A signed family portrait of 1973 by Ramon Dilley (born 1932), painted in the elegant, Belle Époque-flavored manner that made his reputation. The group portrait, the rarest and most demanding of portrait formats, here becomes warm and informal: the genre's long history brought fully into living memory.
How to Collect in This Field
Signatures matter more here. Unlike the Old Master field, where anonymity is normal, 19th and 20th-century portraits are usually signed, and a documented artist with auction records and exhibition history anchors the value.
Look for the artist's inner circle. Portraits of the painter's own family and friends, like Grün's son, were made without a paying client and often show the artist at their freest.
Buy period frames when you can. A Belle Époque gilt frame is increasingly valuable in its own right and completes the object.
The value logic is the same as for landscapes. The famous names have left the room; the quality has not. The painters who exhibited beside Degas, Renoir and their successors offer the collector the same Paris, the same light and the same craft, at prices that still reward a good eye.
Read More in This Series
Continue with our other guides on collecting portraiture: Collecting 18th-Century French Portraits: A Guide, Rigaud, Tocqué and the French Rococo Portrait, Portraits of Unknown Sitters: Why Anonymous Faces Are the Best Value in Old Masters and Habsburg Portraits: Collecting Austrian Imperial Portraiture.
