Individuality and Identity: Naming Sitters in French Portrait Drawings

This exhibition explores stories of (mis)identification in drawings by some of nineteenth-century France’s most renowned artists and their followers, including Théodore Chassériau, Charles Damour, Eugène Delacroix, Joseph Ducreux, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Léon Louis Antoine Riesener, examining portraiture’s powers and limitations in capturing histories, personalities, and identities.

In each of the drawings in this exhibition, the artist’s choices in rendering physiognomy, setting, and wardrobe create the impression that the person represented is real and specific. Naming many of these individuals, however, has proven complex. In some cases, researchers have identified the sitters in drawings that the artist did not intend as portraits but rather as academic exercises, observational sketches, or studies for larger compositions. In others, a sitter’s identification has changed over time, or their name has been lost altogether.

The early nineteenth century saw radical reconfigurations of French society and global relations. The period witnessed revolutions, the dissolution and reestablishment of the monarchy, the Napoleonic Wars, the French conquest of Algeria, and the reinstatement of slavery in France and its colonies after its short-lived abolition. Against this tumultuous backdrop, these drawings reflect attempts by artists and their subjects to form or reinforce social bonds and to navigate encounters across cultures and social class.