Paris 1761 - 1832
Portrait of the sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet
1802 c.
Oil on canvas
Inventory 1890 n. 10783
The present portrait shows the great artist still quite young, as can also be seen by a comparison with the one painted by Jean-Baptiste Desmarais at the age of around twenty-five, in 1788, when the sculptor was at the Academy of France in Rome. Here he spent a period of five years, after his study with Jean-Baptiste Stouf and Etienne-Pierre-Gois, thanks to the Grand Prix of Sculpture obtained in 1784 with the bas-relief Joseph Sold by His Brothers.
However, unlike the image left us by Desmarais—who portrays him in a melancholic attitude and immersed in his own thoughts, reflecting his physical fragility and inner torment—in this effigy Chaudet can be seen with a proud expression, aware of his role as an artist. He wears a shirt with a wide, rich neckline under his green jacket and carries the tools of the trade in his hand—the stiletto and the sketchbook from which some sketches can be glimpsed. As was customary, the artist is presented in his role of draughtsman rather than sculptor, as if to emphasise that sculpture did not fall within the sphere of mere manual activities, but rather involved a great deal of concentration and reflection, through the drawing phase prior to the execution of the sculptural works.
The portrait, datable to around 1802 and the subject of a recent acquisition by the Uffizi Galleries, seems attributable to a particularly happy period in Antoine’s life: on his return to France he met Jeanne-Elisabeth Gabiou, a young painter who had trained with Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun and who eventually became his pupil. The two married on 14 April 1793 and remained together until the sculptor’s death in 1810.
Although the painting is not signed, it is certainly by Elisabeth Chaudet, an autograph confirmed by the greatest scholar of the painter, Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian, author of a long essay dedicated to the French artist.
After the death of Antoine-Denis Chaudet, Elisabeth married in a second marriage Pierre-Arsène-Denis Husson, a senior finance official who the following year became Archivist of the Crown of Louis XVIII of France. This second union did not end her career as an artist, as she continued to exhibit at the Salon until 1817 before dying of cholera, at the age of sixty-five, in 1832. In 1843, her second husband bequeathed ten of Elisabeth’s paintings to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras, nine of which were destroyed in a bombing raid in July 1915.
After her debut at the Salon de Correspondance, Jeanne-Elisabeth regularly participated in the public exhibitions of the Louvre from 1796 to 1817, gaining a fair amount of success from critics and the general public alike. The artist obtained a wide consensus, especially in her depictions of children in family contexts and in particular situations that saw them take a leading role. In doing so, she achieved a fusion of portrait and genre painting. In the field of portraiture, she achieved fame in 1798 with the Ritratto di Mme Gérard [Portrait of Mme Gérard] and then confirmed her popularity with Una fanciulla che vuole insegnare a leggere al suo cane [A Girl Who Wants to Teach Her Dog to Read], a work that struck art critics both for the originality of the subject matter and for the quality of its execution, demonstrating on the one hand the new role accorded to childhood between the 18th and 19th centuries, in the wake of the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s L'Emile , and on the other hand linking back to the painting of Jean-Baptiste Greuze for the subjects of children and gender, while detaching herself in terms of style.
Among other works inspired by the themes of childhood are Il Bambino addormentato sotto lo sguardo di un cane coraggioso [The Child Asleep Under the Gaze of a Brave Dog] (1801, Rochefort, Musée d'Art et d’Histoire), or the Fanciulla che dà da mangiare ai polli [Maiden Feeding Chickens], signed and dated 1802 (Arenenberg, Napoleonmuseum) and purchased by Empress Joséphine. As further proof of her portraiture skills combined with her originality in representing childhood, in 1806 Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet exhibited the portrait of Maria Laetitia Murat (Ajaccio, Musée Fesch) where the young princess is depicted not as in the ceremonial portraits or as a miniature adult, but with her typical personality of a playful and cheerful child. The artist was able to give these subjects a sense of naturalism and a transparency of feelings that, according to the commentators of the time, exceeded the limits and conventions of the genre, to become an example of the evolution of the role of childhood in the society of the time, as well as a vehicle of edifying meanings and moral values.
Despite an artistic career of a certain importance, after her death Elisabeth Chaudet’s critical fortune suffered a similar fate to that of other women artists who lived in the post-revolutionary period: after having enjoyed a level of success in their own time, they fell into oblivion in the history of French art. It was thanks to the 1974 exhibition, De David à Delacroix. La peinture française de 1774 à 1830 [From David to Delacroix. French Painting from 1774 to 1830], where the painting Una fanciulla che piange un piccione morto [Girl Mourning a Dead Pigeon] of 1808 (Arras, Musée des Beaux Arts) was exhibited, that the painter’s production was partly rediscovered.