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For more on the Worcester Art Museum, see the first post in this series. In this post we look at four French, Spanish, and English portraits of the 19th century – not room by room, but in chronological order. 

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/duOJxKfrIk4.

Ca. 1799, French: Lethiere

There’s something entrancing and very modern about this serious young woman, who may be one of the artist’s pupils. Guillaume Guillon-Lethiere (1760-1832), born a free man on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a French official and a formerly enslaved mother, traveled to France with his father in 1774. By age 14, he was studying painting. He was an early adopter of the Neoclassical style popularized by Jacques-Louis David, and like David, created history paintings that hark back to the simple virtues of the Roman Republic. When Lethiere returned to Paris in 1791 after studying in Rome, he supported the French Revolution. More on his life here. Ingres, another leading Neoclassicist, did numerous pencil portraits of Lethiere, including this one at the Morgan Library.

1815, Spanish: Goya

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) is one of Spain’s most famous painters. Like all his portaits, this one captures the sitter’s character and mood as well as his physical appearance.

Goya also did searing history paintings such as Third of May 1808 (1814), which records one among tens of thousands of brutal deaths while the Spanish were fighting Napoleon’s troops. Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and his exile of its monarch kicked off a series of independence movements in Spanish America. Fernandez Flores, the subject of this painting, was appointed Bishop of Quito (Ecuador), to replace a bishop who had fled an insurrection there. But Fernandez Flores was reassigned to Seville before he could take up the Quito post.

Ca. 1825, British: Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) is the third of the great triad of British portrait-painters, along with Gainsborough and Reynolds (both of whom appeared in last week’s post). We’ve finally moved from portraits of nobles and clergy to successful businessmen. Dunlop, of Scots descent, was a tobacco merchant and insurance broker. His wife was an American.

1870-1880, French: Tissot

James Tissot (1836-1902), who studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, became a notable painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He’s best known for his depictions of high-fashion women of the Belle Epoque and Victorian England, for which he uses a combination of realistic and impressionistic styles. Among Tissot’s friends were Edgar Degas, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Oscar Wilde. Tissot was invited to participate in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, but refused.

The sitter here is unidentified. Pocket watches such as he holds in his hand first became common with the rise of railroads, the first method of transportation to run on strict timetables.

Next week: early American portraits at the Worcester Art Museum.

More

• For the Resurrecting Romanticism conference in October 2023, I’m working on a talk on art at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, a.k.a. the Columbian Exposition. One of the questions I’ll be addressing is why the organizers of the Exposition, and the painters whose works appeared there, were so very keen to surpass the buildings and exhibitions of the 1889 Paris world’s fair. To remind myself of the development of European and American painting over time, this series of posts is a quick overview of European portraits from the Renaissance to the 19th century, followed by American portraits. Eventually I’ll post on other paintings at the Worcester Art Museum.
• If the history of Western painting interests you, check out my Innovators in Painting: a 140-page survey focusing on innovations that gave painters more power to make their viewers stop, look, and think about paintings.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here. For examples of favorite recommendations from past years, click here.