Portrait of the Artist Joseph Chinard

Jean-Baptiste Isabey · 1799/1802

Medium

Black chalk, with stumping and erasing, and touches of brush and black watercolor, heightened with gum Arabic and lead-white gouache (partially discolored), on off-white wove paper

Original size

24.9 × 19.8 cm (9 13/16 × 7 13/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

The intimate intensity of this 1799/1802 portrait reveals Isabey at his most unguarded — capturing a fellow artist with the kind of directness reserved for friends rather than patrons. Jean-Baptiste Isabey was the preeminent portraitist of post-Revolutionary France, best known for his exquisite miniatures that documented the faces of Napoleon's inner circle. Here, working in black chalk on wove paper, he employs a remarkably layered technique: stumping and erasing to model form, delicate brushwork in black watercolor, and lead-white gouache highlights that lend the surface an almost sculptural relief. The subject, Joseph Chinard, was one of the most celebrated Neoclassical sculptors of the period — making this a rare meeting of two masters in a single sheet. Isabey's portraits were so prized that Napoleon appointed him court painter and designer, tasking him with documenting the principal figures of the Consulate and Empire — a role that secured his reputation across four successive French regimes. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates this intimate drawing into a richly toned canvas, preserving the quiet authority of Isabey's line while giving the work a permanence suited to any interior.