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French Impressionist Portraits Beyond the Famous Names
How to Recognize an Impressionist Portrait
Look at where the light comes from, then at where the painter stopped.
| The Salon portrait | The Impressionist portrait | |
| Light | From a fixed point, the rest in shadow, the background brown | The light of the room, and colour in the shadows |
| Clothes | Orders, drapery, a column | Whatever the sitter wore that afternoon. It dates the canvas. |
| Finish | Finished all over | Finished where the likeness holds, and nowhere else |
A weak one is laboured all over, or abandoned before the face held.
How to Read a Signed Portrait of the 1890s
A modern canvas carries its own paperwork.
Portrait in a Sailor Collar, Jules-Alexandre Grün
| The canvas, straight on.The faceDrawn, then leftFeatures drawn in a fine dark lineGreen scrubbed round the head like a halo | The signature, close.The signatureWho painted itGrün, in white cursiveLower left, the weave showing through | The back, the stamp.The backHow it left the studioStencilled 12P, a stock canvas sizeThe stamp of the sale of his studio |
The front says who painted it. The back says how it was sold.
Who Else Painted Portraits in These Years
The famous names are the ones who were painted. The field is much wider.
The household namesA handful
Showed with themEight exhibitions, 1874-1886Desboutin, among others
The wider circleNever showed with the groupPainters settled in Paris from abroad · Salon portraitists who modernized late · Poster designers, Grün among them
Their signed portraits of the 1880s and 1890s are the field a collector actually meets.
Buying an Impressionist-Style Portrait
Is it signed?
Usually.
Unlike the Old Master field, these painters signed, and a signed, sometimes dated canvas lets you place the work exactly.
Is the surface only dirty?
Often.
These canvases are a century old rather than three, so relining is less common and the paint is usually stable. Surface dirt and old varnish are reversible.
Works citedEdgar Degas, In a Café, 1875-76. Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Édouard Manet, The Artist, 1875. Museu de Arte de São Paulo
