Jean-Marc Nattier
[French Rococo Era Painter, 1685-1766]
Art Hermitage
*****
Portrait of Pierre-Victoire, Baron of Besenval
Second half of the 18th century
Pierre-Victor, baron de Besenval sat for Nattier sometime in the 1740s, when the artist was at the height of his career. Captain of the French king's Swiss Guards, Knight of the Order of St Louis, the baron is shown in armour against a battlefield, and yet in this somewhat lyrical portrait he seems very unlike a cruel military commander. The soft outlines of his face, the tender smile, reveal him to be a man of elegance and poetry, and indeed he was renowned for his memoirs and a number of famous poems.
Portrait of Louis XV of France
France, 1745
This portrait of Louis XV was one of two paintings commissioned from the famous portraitist Jean-Marc Nattier in 1745. The artist depicted the sitter without any of the overstated majesty and ceremony typical of 18th-century official portraiture. Only the details of the costume - the armour and the cloak with its coats of arms - tell us that this is the King of France. In the soft modelling of forms and the gentle oval of the face with its slightly rosy cheeks, which make Louis look more like an elegant society figure than the monarch of a powerful state, we see Nattier's refined manner, typical of his portraits of the 1740s.
"Portrait of Alexander Kurakin"
"Portrait of Catherine I"
1717
"Portrait of a Woman in Grey"
Early 18th century
Here we see the refinement and grace typical of the Rococo portrait, of which Nattier was a leading exponent. The artist chose his elegant, soft colours, dominated by the pearly-grey of the woman's dress, not on the basis of nature but in agreement with a decorative system very similar to that applied to Rococo interiors. This mysterious Woman in Grey is possibly Louise-Adelaide d'Orleans , daughter of the French Regent Philippe d'Orleans. She entered a convent in 1719.
Source of entry: Collection of P. P. Durnovo, 1920
