ANICET-CHARLES-GABRIEL LEMONNIER | Portrait of a man

Acquis à Bordeaux, commerce d'art, 1993

Rennes, 2012, n°69 (notice par Aude Henry-Gobet) ;
Sceaux, 2013 (sans catalogue)

Small creases on the right and left corners and at the bottom margin. Small light brown stain on top of figure to the right, but overall in good condition and media strong. Sold framed
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Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier was born in Rouen in 1743.  He began his artistic training at The Rouen School of Fine Arts where he studied under the artist, Jean Baptiste Descamps (1715-1791).  By 1765 Lemonnier was in Paris and was accepted into the highly acclaimed drawing school, L'Académie Royal de Peinture et Sculpture, where he was taught and tutored by Joseph Marie Vien (1716-1809).  Whilst enrolled there, Lemonnier studied alongside fellow artists Jacques Louis David and François Andre Vincent, whose influence can be seen in his own work. In 1772 Lemonnier won the coveted Prix de Rome and entered the French Academy in Rome where both Joseph Marie Vien and Louis Michel Van Loo held directorships during his tenure at Palazzo Mancini.  Both artistic directors had a significant impact on Lemonnier's style.  The Adrien drawing reveals a strong debt to Louis Michel Van Loo's work.  Grand in scale, Lemonnier has drawn a well-dressed gentleman in sumptuously rendered drapery.  As Aude Henry-Gobet observes, Lemonnier must have been inspired by Louis Michel Van Loo's portrait of Louis XV, roi de France et de Navarre, painted in 1761 (Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon). In the Adrien sheet, the stance of the standing gentleman and the way in which the drapery has been handled, creating convincing textures throughout the lavish garment, are all evident in Van Loo's magisterial portrait.  Henry-Gobet also notes that the contrapposto of the man in the Adrien drawing is typical of how Louis Michel Van Loo depicted his figures, referring in particular to his l'Autoportait de Louis Michel peignant le portrait de son père Jean Baptiste Van Loo (Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon).

Aude Henry-Gobet remarks that this handsome portrait would have been executed during Lemonnier's stay in Rome and that it was possibly drawn during the annual carnival that the Romans organised on the Corso.