- Joseph Duplessis
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (
Carpentras , nearAvignon ,22 September 1725 –Versailles ,1 April 1802 ) was a French painter, known for the clarity and immediacy of hisportrait s.He was born into a family with an artistic bent and received his first training from his father, a surgeon and talented amateur, then with Joseph-Gabriel Imbert (1666–1749), who had been a pupil of
Charles Le Brun . From 1744-47 or later he worked in Rome, in the atelier ofPierre Subleyras , who was also from the south of France, who died in 1749. In Italy Duplessis became fast friends with Joseph Vernet, another Occitan.He returned to Carpentras, spent a brief time in
Lyon then arrived about 1752 inParis , where he was accepted into theAcadémie de Saint-Luc and exhibited some portraits, which were now his specialty, in 1764, but did not achieve much notice until his exhibition of ten paintings at theParis salon of 1769, very well received and selected for special notice byDenis Diderot ; theAcadémie de peinture et de sculpture accepted him in the category of portraitist, considered a lesser category at the time. He continued to exhibit at the Paris salons, both finished paintings and sketches, until 1791, and once more, in 1801.His portrait of the Dauphine in 1771 and his appointment as a "peintre du Roi" assured his success: most of his surviving portraits date from the 1770s and 1780s. He received privileged lodgings in the Galeries du Louvre. In the Revolution, he withdrew to safe obscurity at Carpentras during the
Reign of terror . Afterwards, from 1796, he served as curator at the newly-founded museum formed at Versaillles, so recently emptied of its furnishings at theRevolutionary sales . His uncompromising self-portrait at this time of his life is at Versailles.His adjusted his style to the social condition of his sitter: his portrait of Charles-Claude, comte d'Angiviller, director of the "
Bâtiments du Roi ", is as distant and conventional as his state portrait of Louis XVI in coronation robes (1776) [The original disappeared, but has been identified in the Musée Ingres, Montauban (ref Ministère ).] , while his realistic and intimate portrait of the opera composerChristoph Willibald Gluck (Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna) catches the composer at the keyboard in a moment of inspiration and his penetrating portrait of the sculptor Christophe Gabriel Allegrain (Louvre Museum , "illustration") shows him having just laid down his chisel: this was the "morceau de reception" that gained him admittance to the Académie. His portrait ofBenjamin Franklin (1778), more than any other, has fixed the image of Franklin for posterity. [Duplessis received many commissions for duplicates: one is at the National Portrait Gallery, London; another at the North Carolina Museum of Art.]His portrait of the financier
Jacques Necker hung atVoltaire 'sChâteau de Coppet . Several reduced versions were made, one of which is at the Louvre.Many of his portraits received a wider circulation as
engraving s.Notes
References
*Jean-Paul Chabaud, "Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. Un provençal, Peintre du Roi", 2004. With catalogue raisonné and archival material. ISBN 2-9521063-0-4
* [http://www.duplessis.free.fr/ Joseph-Siffred Duplessis] The most comprehensive on-line sketch of his career.
* [http://search.famsf.org:8080/search.shtml?keywords=joseph+duplessis (Fine Art Museums of San Francisco) "Portrait of a Gentleman (Jean-Baptiste-Francois Dupre?)"] , ca 1779 - 1782. Brief sketch of his career.
* [http://www.khm.at/system2E.html?/staticE/page745.html (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) "Portrait of Chrisoph Willibald Gluck"] , 1775
* [http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=11112 (Louvre Museum) "Joseph-Marie Vien"] , 1782. A repetition, in oil "en grisaille" on paper (mounted on canvas), is at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston .
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=11&viewMode=1&item=32%2E100%2E132 (Metropolitan Museum) "Benjamin Franklin"] , 1778. Shown at the Salon of 1779.
* [http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_1=AUTR&VALUE_1=DUPLESSIS%20Joseph%20Siffred&DOM=All&REL_SPECIFIC=1&IMAGE_ONLY=CHECKED Ministère de la culture: (Louvre Museum, Château de Versailles) Portraits by or attributed to Duplessis]
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