Circle of Jean Daniel Welper, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1750–60

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Circle of Jean Daniel Welper, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1750-60,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.2246.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Circle of Jean Daniel Welper, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1750-60,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.2246.

This portrait was probably painted by an artist in the circle of Jean Daniel Welper, miniature painter to King Louis XV.¹ The miniature’s matte surface, varying use of watercolor and gouache, vellum support, and resemblance to portraits by Welper, as well as the sitter’s clothing and hairstyle, all indicate that it was painted in France between 1750 and 1760. After the introduction of ivory supports by Rosalba Carriera (Italian, 1673–1757) in about 1705, ivory became the predominant material for the production of miniatures in England, where it had become a major import due to England’s colonial holdings. In contrast, French artists were slow to incorporate this new material and continued to paint on vellum through the 1760s.

Likewise, the English fashion for varying matte and shiny areas of paint with the addition of gum arabic, beginning around 1710, did not take hold in France until the 1770s.² This miniature follows the French preference for matte surfaces, resembling pastels, and the use of gouache alongside watercolor. The face is finely painted with translucent, stippled layers of watercolor, contrasting with the more dense and opaque use of gouache in the clothing and hair.

The sitter’s hair follows a style popularized by Louis XV. It is heavily powdered, shaped with curls at the sides of the head, and tied back at the nape with a black ribbon. The ends of the ribbon are drawn forward and tucked into the collar in a style worn by fashionable men of the era (Fig. 1). The sitter was probably a person of means, or aspired to be, as evidenced by his adoption of court fashions and the rich gold bullion embroidery adorning his coat.

Notes

1. Welper also served as drawing master to the king’s daughters. We are grateful to Bernd Pappe, who examined this miniature and offered his insights on the attribution and date during a visit to the Nelson-Atkins July 24–26, 2023. Notes in NAMA curatorial files.

2. Pappe, 2023, notes in NAMA curatorial files.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 27, p. 15, (repro.), as Unknown Man.