Nicolas Perchet,

1795

A major Parisian artist of the Napoleonic era, Prud’hon is best known for his large allegorical paintings and full-length official portraits. Fewer in number are his small pastels, most of which are expressive portraits made during 1795–96, when he was living with his family in northeastern France after the executions of the Revolutionary leaders Robespierre and Saint-Just, whose ideals he had supported. Preserved in its original frame, this work represents the forty-year-old Nicolas Perchet, a local tribunal judge and former member of the Constitutional Convention in Paris. Prud’hon’s arrestingly informal and austere treatment of this bourgeois citizen challenges the smooth and polished appearance of earlier French eighteenth-century pastel portraits of bewigged and powdered aristocrats. These were prized for their painterly technique, speed of execution, and ability to capture the sitter’s fleeting likeness — as in a present-day snapshot. Everything about Perchet’s appearance, from his slightly furrowed brow and cropped, disheveled hair, to his high cheekbones and elegantly knotted cravat can be read as both the identifying marks of the portrayed and the short stabbing strokes of the portrayer. Prud’hon’s pastel technique is indebted to that of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, whose late portraits audaciously juxtaposed broadly applied layers of pastel in isolated passages. Prud’hon’s portrait advances Chardin’s innovative approach by asserting a rough tactility throughout that forecasts the blurred immediacy of pastel portraits by later practitioners such as Manet and Degas.