Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of Joachim Lebreton, 1795

This half-length portrait of Joachim Lebreton exemplifies the intimate yet elegant style of portraiture that Adélaïde Labille-Guiard developed in the aftermath of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror (1793–94). Unlike Labille-Guiard’s most accomplished paintings of the 1780s, which portray their sitters in elaborate spaces that revel in illusionism and abound with markers of status and identity (Fig. 1), her portraits of the late 1790s emphasize naturalism over artifice and establish a less formal relationship between sitter and viewer (Fig. 2).

The spare composition presents Lebreton seated in a neoclassical wooden chair, of which only a portion of the back is visible. His brightly lit face and hands and his gently rumpled, white linen cravat and cuffs stand out against a background of muted grays and browns, in a space where the abrupt foreshortening of his right arm creates an illusion of shallow depth.

Lebreton appears in three-quarters view, with the right side of his body leaning against the back of the chair. His bent right elbow juts out behind him; his right hand rests nonchalantly on his left forearm; and his left hand grips the top of the rectangular backrest. Turning his face toward the picture plane, he gazes softly ahead and to the left, at a point beyond our view, while the corners of his closed mouth rise in the stirrings of a smile, giving him a welcoming air.

Labille-Guiard depicts Lebreton in the stylishly relaxed fashions that reigned in Paris in the mid-1790s. The flowing waves and flyaway wisps of his shoulder-length brown hair echo the suppleness of his generously cut brown redingote—a double-breasted coat with wide, flat lapels, inspired by the English riding coat in both appearance and name. The coat depicted here—which features a tall, unstructured collar and a wide, loosely draped lapel that spills onto Lebreton’s sleeve—is worn open, revealing a shimmering silk vest in a bold pattern of diagonal red-and-black stripes. A narrow gold ring gleams on the little finger of his left hand, adding a note of understated luxury.

The daughter of a mercer, Labille-Guiard grew up amid fabrics and fashion and excelled at capturing the look and feel of materials.¹ Technical analysis of Portrait of Joachim Lebreton reveals some of the methods that she employed to foster this verisimilitude.² For instance, on a canvas that is otherwise thinly painted, subtle passages of impasto applied to the cuffs, the cravat, and the edges of the lapel foster an illusion of comparative stiffness in these areas. Near the sitter’s right shoulder, the red and black of the vest are visible through an overlaid triangle of translucent linen, an effect created by painting wet-into-wet, whereas dry brushwork was used to generate feathery effects in the sitter’s hair. Dabs of transparent, bright magenta paint add glints of light to Lebreton’s silk vest and suggest lifelike notes of moisture on his lips and nose.

The unusual signature and date visible at the lower left of the painting—“Labille d.^tte Guiard / l’an 3.^eme de la R”—situate the work specifically in the life of both the artist and the nation. The signature refers to the artist’s marital history: Adélaïde Labille married Nicolas Guiard in 1769 and began signing her paintings “Labille wife [femme] of Guiard,” but after her 1793 divorce, she adopted the signature “Labille called [dite] Guiard.” The date—“year 3 of the Republic”—refers to the new calendar adopted in 1793 by the National Convention, which started with September 22, 1792 (when France was declared a republic); “year 3” ran from September 22, 1794 through September 21, 1795.

Portrait of Joachim Lebreton is one of at least six portraits that Labille-Guiard sent to the Salon exhibition that opened on October 2, 1795.³ This was the first exhibition in which Labille-Guiard had participated since 1791. Having been elected to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1783, Labille-Guiard went on to attract the patronage of several members of the royal family in the final years of the ancien régime, attaining the status of “Painter to Mesdames” (the unmarried aunts of Louis XVI) and receiving major commissions from two of them, Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire; their niece, Madame Élisabeth (the king’s sister); the comte de Provence (a brother of the king); and even Louis XVI himself.⁴ During the revolution, she advocated for moderate reforms in the academy and in the nation, arousing the ire of her more radical colleagues. She survived the Reign of Terror, in part, by moving to the countryside on the eastern outskirts of Paris, but several of her paintings depicting members of the royal family were destroyed in public bonfires in 1793 by order of the Paris city government.⁵

The nation’s art institutions were also in the midst of reinvention in 1795, with Joachim Lebreton playing an important role in the process. Born in Saint-Méen-le-Grand, Brittany, in 1760, Lebreton moved in 1772 to Paris, where he was educated and ordained by the brothers of the Theatine Order.⁶ In 1779, he obtained a post teaching rhetoric in a Theatine school in Tulle, in the Limousin region of south-central France. As Father Lebreton, he published his first book, La logique adaptée à la rhétorique, in 1788.⁷ At the outbreak of revolution in 1789, Lebreton left the order and returned to Paris. In 1794, he married Anne-Julie d’Arcet, the eldest daughter of the chemist Jean d’Arcet.⁸ When Labille-Guiard exhibited his portrait, Lebreton was serving as head of the museum department of the Committee of Public Instruction and was an important contributor to the journal La Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique. He would soon be named head of the Ministry of the Interior’s Bureau of Fine Arts and a founding member of the newly created National Institute of Arts and Sciences, which replaced the old regime’s system of royal academies. Lebreton served as the first secretary of the Class of Moral and Political Sciences and, after an 1803 reorganization of the institute, he was appointed “Perpetual Secretary” of the Class of Fine Arts. Unlike the defunct Royal Academy, the National Institute permitted no female members.

With support from Lebreton and other administrators whose patronage Labille-Guiard cultivated, she began rebuilding her shattered career. In May 1795, the Committee of Public Instruction awarded Labille-Guiard two thousand livres as a measure of compensation for the destruction of her paintings, and in September of the same year the National Convention also granted her a prize. She exhibited several oil portraits at the Salon exhibitions of 1795, 1798, and 1799, yet she never regained the stature that she enjoyed before the revolution. When Labille-Guiard died in 1803, Lebreton eulogized her in an eight-page published “Notice” that summarized her life, her career, and her character, furnishing the basis for all subsequent biographies of the artist.⁹

Lebreton’s career also waxed and waned with the vagaries of political circumstance. During the Napoleonic era (1799–1815), Lebreton was a central actor in the articulation and implementation of national arts policies.¹⁰ In recognition of his service, he was honored with the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1803. A vocal opponent of repatriating the antiquities seized by French Army expeditions, Lebreton was removed from his post at the National Institute after Napoleon’s fall.¹¹ At the invitation of John VI, King of Portugal (1767–1826), Lebreton relocated to Brazil with the intention of establishing a school of fine arts modeled on the French system. Lebreton died in Rio de Janeiro in 1819.¹² Although he did not live to see his project realized, he is acclaimed as a founding father of Brazilian art education.¹³

Notes

1. On Labille-Guiard’s biography and career, see Laura Auricchio, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009); Anne-Marie Passez, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1749–1803: Biographie et Catalogue raisonné de son œuvre (Paris: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1973); and Roger Portalis, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803) (Paris: Imprimerie Georges Petit, 1902).

2. Technical notes by Mary Schafer, NAMA paintings conservator, May 24, 2011, NAMA conservation file, 94-34.

3. The published guide to the Salon of 1795 lists four paintings by Labille-Guiard in addition to “Plusieurs Portraits sous le même numéro” (Several Portraits under the same number); see Jean-François Heim, Claire Béraud, and Philippe Heim, Les Salons de peinture de la Révolution française, 1789–1799 (Paris: C.A.C. Sarl. ÉDITION, 1989), 248.

4. The academy had admitted female artists in small numbers since the seventeenth century, although no more than four women were permitted to be members at any one time. On the uneasy relationship between women and the academy, see Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 73–104. For a more general history of women in the academy, see Octave Fidière, Les Femmes artistes a [sic] l’académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Paris: Charavay Frères, 1885).

5. According to a report delivered to the Committee on Public Instruction on 13 Floréal Year III (May 2, 1795), “the Director of the Department of Paris, by an order of August 11, 1793, forced citoyenne Guiard to deliver to the procureur syndic the large and small portraits of the former prince and all the studies related to these works, to be devoured by flames.” Pierre-Louis Ginguené, “Rapport au Comité d’instruction publique,” 13 Floréal an III (May 2, 1795), Archives Nationales, Paris, DXXXVIII/4.

6. For the most current biography of Joachim Lebreton, see Elaine Dias, “Lebreton, Joachim,” in Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art actifs en France de la Révolution à la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: L’institut national de l’histoire de l’art, 2009), online at http://www.inha.fr/spip.php?article2403. See also Henry Jouin, Joachim Lebreton, premier secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des beaux-arts (Paris: Bureaux de l’Artiste, 1892).

   The Theatine Order was an order of secular clergy founded in Rome and approved by Clement VII in 1524. Members of the Order were required to take a vow of poverty and obedience, but didn’t have to attend multiple masses day and night. They wore simple black cassocks and nursed the needy and sick in their communities. Due to their lack of evangelizing zeal, the Order was waning by the 18th century and now they exist only in their original country, Italy. See Deborah Howard, “Theatine Order,” Grove Art Online (2003): https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T084340. In his position teaching at the College de Tulle, which was overseen by the Theatins from 1764 to 1791, Lebreton was friends with several other men of letters who would go on to have careers during the Revolution and successive regimes. See Marcel Dorigny, “Victor Lanneau, Prêtre, Jacobin et Fondateur du Collège des Sciences et des Arts (1758–1830),” Annales Historiques de La Révolution Française, no. 274 (October–December 1988): 347–65.

7. The censor’s approval refers to the author as “le P. Le Breton,” “P.” being an abbreviation for “Père.” P. Le Br. Clerc-Régulier Théatin, La Logique adaptée a [sic] la rhétorique (Paris: Jean-Louis Pichard, 1788), 141.

8. When the Portrait of Joachim Lebreton first went on the market, its sitter was misidentified as Lebreton’s father-in-law, Jean d’Arcet. See Tableaux Anciens et du XIXème Siècle (Monte Carlo:, Christie’s Monaco S.A.M., December 4, 1993), 38–39. Joachim Lebreton and Anne-Julie d’Arcet wed on June 7, 1794. See Anne-Julie d’Arcet, “4.44. Las de Julie Darcet à son frère J.P.J. Darcet, à Sainte-Palaye, 3 p. De son mariage le 7 juin avec Le Breton,” 16 prairial an II (June 4, 1794), Institut de France, Académie des sciences, Paris, collection d’Arcet, 47 J, folder 4.

9. Joachim Lebreton, “Nécrologie: Notice sur Madame Guyard [sic],” Magasin encyclopedique [sic], ou Journal des science, des lettres et des arts 9, no. 1 (1803): 405–14. Lebreton did the same after the deaths of several other artists and intellectuals; see, for example, Joachim Le Breton [sic], Notice Historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de Pierre Julien, Statuaire, de l’ancienne Académie royale de peinture et sculpture, membre de l’Institut national et de la Légion d’honneur (Paris: Baudouin, 1805).

10. See, for example, Udolpho van de Sandt, ed., Rapports à l’Empereur sur le progrès des sciences, des lettres et des arts depuis 1789, vol. 5, Beaux-arts par Joachim Lebreton (Paris: Belin, 1989).

11. Indeed, Lebreton made a direct jab at the British when he asserted, “It was not the French who ripped off the sculptures of Phidias” (referring to the Parthenon sculptures, known as the “Elgin Marbles”). This stance made him some enemies. See Maria Teresa Caracciolo and Gennaro Toscano, eds., Jean-Baptiste Wicar et son temps, 1762–1834 (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2007), 90.

12. See Afonso De Escragnolle Taunay, A Missão Artística de 1816 (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1956), 53–71. Joachim Lebreton brought approximately sixty paintings with him to Brazil; these pictures remain to this day in the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes de Rio. See Panzanelli and Monica Preti-Hamard, eds., La circulation des œuvres d’art: The Circulation of Works of Art in the Revolutionary Era, 1789–1848 (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007), 275.

13. See Elaine Dias, “Correspondências entre Joachim Le Breton e a corte portuguesa na Europa: O nascimento da Missão Artística de 1816,” Anais do Museu Paulista: História e Cultura Material 14, no. 2 (July–December 2006): 301–13.

Portrait of Joachim Lebreton, completed in 1795 by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803), was quickly executed with loose, confident strokes and wet-over-wet brushwork. The somewhat open, plain-weave canvas contains numerous slubs and weave irregularities, and a selvedge is present on the right tacking margin. The ground layer appears to be off-white in color, and its application is thin enough to allow the canvas texture to remain somewhat visible. Paint from the picture plane does not continue onto the preserved tacking margins, confirming that the dimensions of the portrait are original.

No preliminary sketch, either drawn with dry media or painted via brush, was detected when the painting was studied with infrared reflectography or the stereomicroscope. While it is difficult to distinguish many of the earliest layers, glimpses of underlying paint—for example, a brown wash beneath the upper hair and the outer edge of the proper left side of the face, as well as an opaque reddish-brown paint beneath the jacket and proper right hand—suggest an initial lay-in of the figure.

Subsequent applications of paint were thinly applied, forming only a small amount of low impasto in the highlights of the white collar and cuff (Fig. 3). The sitter’s expressive face was constructed using opaque layers of peach, pink, pale yellow, and beige in the highlights, while shades of gray and brown define the mid-tones and shadows. The subtle transitions between light and shade create volume and effectively model the face, even as the artist’s brushwork remains prominent (Fig. 4). With a fine-tipped brush and precisely placed strokes, Labille-Guiard portrayed the reflections and glistening appearance of the sitter’s eyes (Fig. 5).¹ Touches of transparent magenta, most likely a red lake, are apparent in the lower layers of the nostrils and lips. While a bright, opaque pink highlights the tip of the nose (proper left side), cool blue accents are present below the nose and proper right fingernail (Figs. 4, 6).

Wet-over-wet brushwork is evident throughout the painting. Figure 7, a photomicrograph of the vest’s raised collar, illustrates the type of intermingling of color that occurred when one stroke was laid across the wet paint of another. In a similar manner, finely painted lines of red were drawn across the wet paint of the cravat to form the decorative pattern at its edge (Fig. 8). In this area, Labille-Guiard allowed red paint associated with the vest to be faintly visible beneath the thin white fabric in order to convey the transparency of the lightweight textile (Fig. 9). Pale orange paint on the proper left collar and in the shadows of the lower right cravat depict reflections of light from the adjacent red vest (Fig. 10). Shadows in the lower curls were deepened by a dark magenta glaze, and when the painting was examined under the stereomicroscope, a bright red glaze could be seen throughout the vest.

Above a preliminary layer of warm gray, the background consists of loose, energetic brushwork and thin, opaque paint that gradually shifts from an upper light gray to a lower dark brown. A scumble of cool gray overlaps the sitter’s dark brown coat in various locations but stops short of many of his curling locks, indicating that Labille-Guiard fully developed the figure before turning her attention to the background (Fig. 11).

Only minor adjustments were made to the portrait over the course of its completion. The pentimento of an unexplained, rectangular shape, now thinly covered by the gray background, is evident on the left side of the chair, near the bottom edge (Fig. 12). Labille-Guiard also cropped the edge of the chair, reducing its width by roughly one centimeter with overlying gray paint, and slightly modified the proper right edge of the sitter’s coat, where it rests on the back of the chair. Linear marks at the edges of the painting suggest that the portrait was framed before the paint film was fully dry.

The painting is in excellent condition. The edges of the canvas are supported by a strip lining, which was attached before the painting entered the museum’s collection in 1994. A slightly cupped craquelure is somewhat visually distracting in the darker passages of the portrait. Careful retouching was applied to reduce the prominence of a few of these cracks and address a small amount of paint abrasion below the nose and at the lower left corner. Retouching also covers frame abrasion at the outermost edges. The current varnish, estimated to be a natural resin, has an appropriate level of saturation and does not appear to be discolored.

Notes

1. A similar technique is described in the rendering of Portrait of the Comedian Tournelle, Called Dublin (Fig. 2), in which “‘pinpoint’ touches of paint highlight the eyes.” See Andrew K. Kagan, “A Fogg ‘David’ Reattributed to Madame Adélaide Labille-Guiard,” Acquisitions (Fogg Art Museum) (Cambridge, MA: Fogg Art Museum, 1969–1970), 32.