Henner began his career painting portraits in Alsace in the 1850s, where he cared for his ailing mother. Upon his return to Paris in 1858, he won the Prix de Rome and traveled to Italy, where he would remain from 1859 until 1864.
The prolific writer, artist, poet, and art critic Zacharie Astruc was a champion of Manet, Monet, and the Impressionists and a talented sculptor whose works debuted at the Salon of 1871. In the early decades of his career, Henner depicted family members, friends, models, and pupils, and during the 1850s, he made multiple portraits of fellow artists, architects, and composers. In Henner's exceptionally finished chalk study, Astruc appears somewhat younger than in his portrayal by Edouard Manet from 1866 (now in the Kunsthalle, Bremen), suggesting this portrait could be from the late 1850s, a time when Henner avidly depicted others from his creative cohort on canvas. Around 1860 Astruc sat for Carolus-Duran, who would soon befriend Henner when both were in Rome in the early 1860s.
Signed with monogram at upper right in charcoal, "JJH".
Watermark: none.
Wisdom, John Minor, 1905-1999, former owner.
Magriel, Paul, 1906-1990, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twenty-First Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984-1986. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1989, p. 347.