Self-Portrait

Nicolas de Largillière · c. 1725

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

81.1 × 64.8 cm (31 15/16 × 25 1/2 in.); Framed: 101.6 × 87.7 × 10.2 cm (40 × 34 1/2 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Nicolas de Largillière's Self-Portrait is a quietly commanding work — the artist gazing outward with the assurance of a man who spent decades at the summit of Parisian portrait painting. Largillière trained in Antwerp before spending formative years in London under Peter Lely, an unusual trajectory that gave his style a distinctly cosmopolitan richness. He became the preferred portraitist of the French bourgeoisie and merchant class, a counterpart to Rigaud's aristocratic clientele, and his brushwork shows it: surfaces shimmer with fabric, flesh, and light rendered with Flemish thoroughness and French refinement. In this self-portrait, painted when he was approaching seventy, he presents himself palette in hand — a deliberate assertion of craft and identity rather than social rank. Largillière lived to ninety, remaining productive almost until the end, and was elected director of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1738, a recognition of a career spanning well over half a century. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using traditional pigments and layered glazing, preserving the luminous quality of the original and the subtle interplay of shadow and warm light that makes the work feel alive across three centuries.