Jean-Baptiste-Paulin Guérin

Praised for his brilliance by both Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Théodore Géricault, Paulin Guérin is one of the more mysterious and captivating painters of the early 19^th century. The son of a locksmith, he began his life in poverty, painting a number of self-portraits as he could not afford models. After training under Baron Gérard and Vincent, he exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1810, showing only portraits, while his first composition piece, Cain after the death of Abel, for which he received critical acclaim and which was purchased by the government, was exhibited in 1812. Guérin was the official painter to the royal family during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and he remained loyal to the Bourbons after 1830. His early style is rooted in the eighteenth-century tradition of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and, indeed, of some of the great English portrait painters, though he achieves in both his portraits and composition pieces a Neoclassical personality all of his own, chiefly through his idiosyncratic use of color, light, and a very particular form of sfumato which, of course, also distinguishes the paintings of his contemporary Romantic painters Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Baron Gerard, and Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. 

The present, highly elegant portrait was completed in 1816, at a time when Guérin had found his footing as a portraitist in Parisian society; it was only a few years later that he would paint the Duchesse de Berry which was a particular success and ensured for him a long line of important society portrait commissions for years to come. Here the woman, whose identity remains a mystery, quietly pulls on her pearl necklace while staring directly and enticingly at the viewer. She wears a soft, elegant black dress with a fashionable empire waist and delicate lace details along the collar and sleeves. The moody landscape beyond and rich black of her dress are contrasted by her bright red, embroidered shawl which is placed beneath her on the chair.