Pauline Auzou's Workshop - Portrait Of A Boy

Studio of Pauline Auzou (Paris, 1775 - 1835)
Portrait of a boy.
Circa 1800.
Charcoal and shading on paper.
H : 40 ; W : 32 cm.

This charming child's portrait depicts a young boy looking off-camera. He is dressed simply in an open shirt, with his hair treated in separate strands, typical of the style from 1790 to 1810.


Pauline Auzou was a painter renowned for her portraits and historical scenes. A pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Auzou exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon from 1793, showing works with historical and mythological themes, as well as portraits of contemporary figures. Parallel to her career as a painter, she produced drawings for the Journal des dames et des modes, and became involved in teaching art, especially to women.

This portrait can be compared with the work of Pauline Auzou, both for the estompe treatment she used to build the background of her work and to model the hair, enhanced with black stone, but also for the way the shadows of the face are modeled and the unfinished aspect of the clothing.

Auzou was a prolific artist who drew extensively from life, as evidenced by the publication of a collection of her Têtes d'études by Didot in 1800[1] and her work for the Journal des dames, for which she produced some 300 plates.

As Pauline Auzou had many pupils, this is probably a work by the master or one of her most gifted apprentices, her workshop for young girls having opened in 1800.

Illustrations 

Étude pour une tête de vieillard Pierre noire 57.8 x 54 cm, Aguttes sale, lot 81, 06/12/2022.

Laurie Marty de Cambiaire, XX - Drawings & Oil Sketches, Marty de Cambiaire, 20/12/2023.


[1] Corse, Amandine. “Introduction. Plumes et Pinceaux: Discourses de femmes sur l'art en Europe (1750-1850) - Anthologie, edited by Isabelle Baudino et al, translated by Anne-Laure Brisac-Chraïbi et al, Publications de l'Institut national d'histoire de l'art, 2012.