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Work Self-portrait in Hunting Dress

Department of Paintings: French painting

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Portrait of the Artist as a Hunter

© 2009 RMN / Stéphane Maréchalle

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Paintings
French painting

Author(s):
Pomarède Vincent

In his reception piece to the Académie, Desportes breaks with the tradition of atelier self-portraits. Instead, he gives himself the air of a man of quality, a lover of the hunt and nature. The meticulously rendered dogs and game are a direct allusion to his specialty as a painter of animals.

An uncompromising self-portrait

This painting, with its brilliant execution and sense of color, is as successful in its treatment of the subject - it is an uncompromising self-portrait - as in its rendering of animals or landscape. This is the first important work by a painter who would go on to incarnate the century of Louis XV and develop his talent in themes of the hunt. In order to achieve perfection in the treatment of animals, landscapes, and accessories, Desportes worked a great deal from nature, creating numerous animal sketches and outdoor oil studies.

A reception piece

This is the reception piece offered to the Académie Royale by François Desportes, an early 18th-century painter of animals. The work remained in the Académie Collection until it entered the Muséum Central des Arts during the French Revolution in 1793. The Muséum would later become the Louvre.

Technical description

  • François DESPORTES (Champigneul (Marne), 1661 - Paris, 1743)

    Portrait of the Artist as a Hunter

    1699

  • H. 1.97 m; W. 1.63 m

  • Collection of the Académie

    INV. 3899

  • Paintings

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