Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley is an oil on canvas portrait painting by the French artist Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, from 1797. It depicts Jean-Baptiste Belley, a former slave from Saint-Domingue who was elected to serve in the National Convention following the French Revolution.[1][2] He stands beside a bust of the French abolitionist Guillaume Thomas François Raynal.[3] The composition resembles the artist's later Portrait of Chateaubriand.[4]

Description

In this painting, Girodet evokes the tensions of the period. Belley, standing, wears the uniform of a Convention member, with a tropical landscape behind him, and has a stylish relaxed pose, as favoured in many French political portraits of Revolutionary politicians. His elbow rests on a bust of the philosopher Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (1713–1796), author of A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770).[5] Raynal, who had just died, had been a supporter of the abolition of slavery.[6]

Provenance

It was exhibited at the Salon of 1798 at the Louvre in Paris.[7] On display in Toulon for several decades, it was acquired for the Louvre in 1828 for 3,000 Francs when it was believed to be a portrait of Toussaint Louverture. Today it is in the collection of the Palace of Versailles.[8][9]

A drawing by Girodet for the portrait in ink and black chalk is in the Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds from the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation in 1973.[10]

Cultural references

The portrait was used for the dust cover of Christopher Bayly's book The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).

References

  1. ^ Grigsby p.8-9
  2. ^ Palmer p.131
  3. ^ Rosenblum & Janson p.61
  4. ^ Palmer p.131
  5. ^ L'histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (1770)
  6. ^ Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy~Trioson Archived 18 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine, at safran-arts.com, accessed 7 August 2008
  7. ^ Grigsby p.57
  8. ^ Palace of Versailles
  9. ^ https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/joconde/000PE008287 Palace of Versailles
  10. ^ Southgate, M. Therese, Jean-Baptiste Belley in Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 296, No. 2, 12 July 2006, extract online at jama.ama-assn.org, accessed 7 August 2008

Bibliography

  • Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo. Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-revolutionary France. Yale University Press, 2002.
  • Palmer, Allison Lee. Historical Dictionary of Romantic Art and Architecture. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
  • Rosenblum, Robert & Janson, Horst Woldemar. 19th-Century Art. Prentice Hall, 2005.
Allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Jean-Baptiste_Belley
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