Self-Portrait

c. 1725

Nicolas de Largillière (French, 1656–1746)

Nicolas de Largillière was among the most highly esteemed and prolific portrait painters working in the time of Louis XIV of France, and his popularity continued through the period of the regency that followed Louis’s death in 1715. His portraits were admired for their deftly rendered textures and for the confident poses that lent a sense of grandeur and ease to the sitters. They were sought after by a diverse clientele, ranging from royalty and courtiers to the upper middle class. In this work, one of his many self-portraits, Largillière presented himself as fashionably dressed and self-assured, the master of his art. He depicted himself as ready to lay out a painting, working with a porte-crayon (a piece of chalk in a holder) on the blank canvas behind him.

Status: On View, Gallery 216
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Nicolas de Largillière
Title: Self-Portrait
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1720–1730
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 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.)
Credit Line: Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection
Reference Number: 1987.57
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/69003/manifest.json

Pierre Rosenberg in Pittura francese nelle collezioni pubbliche fiorentine, exh. cat., Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 1977, p. 45, under no. 12.
Myra Nan Rosenfeld in Largillierre and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait, exh. cat., Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1981, pp. 43, 48, 51-52 under nos. 1, 2 (version 3).
Georges de Lastic, “Largillierre à Montréal,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 6th ser., 102 (1983), p. 37.
Georges de Lastic, “Propos sur Nicolas de Largillierre en marge d’une exposition,” Revue de l’art, no. 61 (1983), p. 74.
Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1986-1987, Chicago, 1987, p. 56, pl. 5.
James N. Wood and Katherine C. Lee, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, 1988, pp. 9, 38, ill.
Sally Ruth May, Art Institute of Chicago. The Essential Guide, ed. James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein, Chicago, 1993, p. 138, ill.
Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection, Chicago, 1996, pp. 90-93 ill.
J[oseph[ B[aillio] in Philip Conisbee et al., The Collections of the National Gallery of Art, French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century, Washington, D.C., 2009, pp. 300, 302 n. 5.

Paris, Palais du Trocadéro, Exposition Universelle de 1878, no. 594 (cat. published as Notice historique et analytique des peintures, sculptures, tapisseries, miniatures, émaux, dessins, etc., by Henry Jouin, Paris, 1879).

Possibly Ange Laurent de Lalive de Jully, Paris; sold Paris, March 5 (sale postponed until May 2-14), 1770, no. 54, “Le Portrait de ce Peintre tenant un porte-crayon, il est à mi corps & peint sur toile de 2 pieds 6 pouces de haut, sur 2 pieds de large” [81 x 64.8 cm], possibly to Métra (or Mettra), for 130 livres [annotated cat., Bibliothèque nationale de France]. Smirnoff Gallery, Moscow [according to Paris 1878 exh. cat.]. Alfred Edwards, Paris by 1878 [lent to Paris 1878]; sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 25, 1905, no. 28 (ill.) to Ducrey, for Fr. 18,200 [annotated cat. in Frick Art Reference Library]. Jacquinot, Paris, from the 1920s [letter of 7 April 1987 from R. Pardo in curatorial file]; sold by Jacquinot to Galerie Pardo, Paris, 1987 [letter cited above]; sold to the Art Institute, 1987.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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