Abraham Casting out Hagar and Ishmael

Jean Pierre Antoine Tassaert · 1750/1788

Medium

Black and red crayon, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, on cream laid paper

Original size

27.4 × 20.2 cm (10 13/16 × 8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

This drawing captures one of the Old Testament's most painfully human moments — the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael — with a tenderness that cuts against the harshness of the scene. Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert was a Flemish-born artist who built his career in Paris before eventually working at the Prussian court in Berlin, placing him at the intersection of French Rococo draftsmanship and the emerging neoclassical sensibility of the late eighteenth century. His handling of black and red crayon with brown wash and white gouache heightening shows a draftsman at full command of the medium — figures emerge from shadow with a softness that oil paint rarely achieves on first pass. The layering of warm and cool tones gives the composition an almost atmospheric intimacy, unusual for a subject so laden with theological weight. Tassaert was particularly respected among his contemporaries for his drawings, which circulated widely through printmaking and collector networks across Europe, making works like this one more influential than their quiet scale might suggest. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the original, a work that has spent centuries behind glass. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates its emotional directness onto canvas — preserving the drama of light and shadow that Tassaert built across layers of chalk and wash, and bringing a private masterwork into daily life.