Portrait Of A Young Man In A Red Jacket, Attributed To Alexis Grimou

 
Dimensions: H 42cm x W 32cm
Dimensions with frame: H 67cm x W 57cm


Portrait representing a young man in a red jacket, from behind, his head turned towards the viewer.

18th century pastel.

Due to the singularity of the position of the character, the aura of background color to bring out the portrait, the work of the hair and the strawberry around his neck, we attribute this very beautiful pastel to Alexis Grimou (1678-1733 ), a court portraitist of Louis XV, many of whose works are now exhibited in major museums.
Alexis Grimou (1678-1733) is a French painter of the 17th and 18th centuries.

After a period when the portrait, in the 17th century, wanted to be more representative of the social level and had to sublimate the image of the model, the 18th century, in which Alexis Grimou excelled, focused on a more natural and characteristic representation of the subject.
Thus, the works of Grimou, a pupil of Bon Boulogne then of François de Troy, focus mainly on a more intimate representation (through the chiaroscuro that he owes a lot to Rembrandt) but also on a whimsical representation of the characters, like a search of his own whimsical character.

The artist also nicknamed in his century "the French Rembrandt" has a pictorial touch quite similar to that of Drouais: the faces are round, the lips pursed, the characters generally carry a strawberry around the neck and are represented on a fairly neutral background. . But unlike Hubert Drouais, whose characters are more classic, Grimou's original representations are characterized by movement, extravagant and singular positions, atypical subjects, such as portraits of drinkers, and almost laughing but gentle faces.

Our portrait presented here is typical of these characteristics. It is quite rare for this century to represent a character with his back to the spectator but whose head is turned towards us, Alexis Grimou is one of the artists to position his characters in this singular way. His lips show a small smile but his eyes are soft. He is represented with his bright red jacket and wears around his neck a very light strawberry in several thicknesses. His flowing hair insists on the action of the young man who turns his head towards the viewer. This one stands out from the background with an aura of color around his face, as Alexis Grimou regularly does.


Many of the painter's works adorn French and foreign museums, such as:


The self-portrait of Alexis Grimou as Bacchus, painted in 1728 and exhibited at the Magnin Museum in Dijon, whose position of the body and the face turned towards the spectator is close to our pastel.


But also, The Young Pilgrim, painted in 1732 and exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bordeaux.


Or The Young Man exhibited at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Who wears a red drape and a strawberry around his neck.


The Portrait of a drinker, exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Agen, presents us with a man whose facial features are similar to our portrait. The pulpy, pinched mouth is very red. The nose is straight and the chin round, the eyes are almond-shaped and the face is lit by a very beautiful chiaroscuro, the light of which comes from the left, illuminating the right side of the character.


The same goes for the portrait of a child, sold in 1991 by Drouot, and whose face in chiaroscuro and the movement of the hair, although less marked, recall our portrait.


Or even The Young Man in Armor, exhibited at the Fabre Museum in Montpellier, which is defined by a very beautiful chiaroscuro on the face, a position of the back with the face turned towards us and a three-ply ruff around the neck.


Other very large museums, such as the Louvre, the National Museum in Warsaw, the Uffizi Museum in Florence, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen, that of Besançon, that of Orleans but also the Hermitage Museum in Saint-Petersburg in Russia and many others, also present works by this artist.