Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

5. Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin, Self Portrait, 1815-1820,
Sotheby’s, 3 July 2013, lot 47.
must surely represent some stable boy (quelque garçon
d’écurie) but Lorenz Eitner described this painting as
…of the highest quality and certainly genuine and
possibly representing Delacroix 14 . Alfred Robaut,
compiler of the catalogue raisonné of Delacroix’s work,
in his introduction, lists amongst likenesses of the artist
a lost portrait drawing by Géricault of around 1820,
(like the present work, unknown to Clément, author
of Géricault’s first catalogue) which was in the sale
of the collection of Achille Dévéria (9 April 1858, lot
142). He too affirms that Delacroix posed for Géricault
for the Raft of the Medusa. Robaut then illustrates an
etching by Frédéric Villot (fig. 6) after a self portrait by
Delacroix said to date from around 1819 which, with
its deep set eyes and somewhat sulky mouth bears an
extremely strong resemblance to the present sitter (see
also the published self portrait sketch in the Louvre 15 ,
fig. 7), an affinity further supported by the self portrait
of circa 1816 in the Musée des Beaux Art, Rouen
(fig. 8), showing the artist again in a white shirt, this
time tied tightly at the collar with a reddish scarf, a
painting once itself thought to be by Géricault.
significantly similar work is the seemingly unfinished
portrait of a young man, again recorded by Clément
and now in the Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth 9
(fig.2). These two last mentioned works share with the
present painting a certain directness and informality
indicative of familiarity between artist and sitter.
Géricault was deeply admired by Delacroix who, it is
well-known, spent time in the older artist’s studio in
the period around 1817-1819, and modeled for the
figure with a shock of black hair seen from the back in
the Raft of the Medusa 10 (figs. 3-4). The two men first
met in 1815 in Guérin’s studio and Delacroix recorded
in a notebook that Géricault admitted him into his
circle and introduced him to his family 11 . Delacroix’s
appearance was described by Théophile Gautier in
the following terms: ses abondants cheveux noirs …
ses yeux fauves à l’expression féline, couverts d’épais
sourcils… son menton volontaire et puissant…, lui
composait une physionomie d’une beauté farouche,
étrange, éxotique, presque inquiétante…Cette tête
nerveuse, expressive, mobile, pétillait d’esprit, de génie
et de passion 12 . Underneath a dark jacket, the present
sitter wears a white shirt with a broad collar let loose
by the low knot of a colourful scarf, the kind of clothes
seen in other portraits of artists of the time such as
that of Léon Pallière and a selfportrait by Jean-Baptiste
Paulin Guérin (fig.5), both of which date from 1817 13 .
Bazin did not take seriously either the attribution or the
identification of the sitter, commenting that the portrait
6. Frédéric Villot, Portrait of Eugène Delacroix, 1819.
55