Antoine François Sergent, called Sergent-Marceau, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1815

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Antoine François Sergent, called Sergent-Marceau, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1815,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.2318.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Antoine François Sergent, called Sergent-Marceau, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1815,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.2318.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait was probably painted in about 1815, during Sergent-Marceau’s long political exile in Italy. The artist and his wife, Émira (b. 1753), who was an engraver, resided in the northern Italian town of Brescia from 1810 to 1816, where they founded a drawing school.¹ During that time, Sergent-Marceau was hard at work on a book of historic costumes, which he published there in 1813, and subsequently a multivolume series of prints of famous men and women with Jean François Bosio (French, 1764–1827), published in Milan between 1815 and 1818.²

This miniature is densely painted, with gouache thickly applied, particularly in the sitter’s clothing and the purple background. The thickness of the paint has led to losses, particularly in areas of the blue coat, which have recently been toned to reduce their visual disruption.³ Sergent-Marceau applied watercolor more sparingly to the face, with minute stippling utilized for an airbrushed, pointillist effect. While Sergent-Marceau did not frequently paint in miniature, he was clearly skilled, despite the deteriorated condition of this miniature.

The sitter’s intent gaze begs the question of his identity, but for now he remains unknown. He may have been part of Sergent-Marceau’s artistic circle in Brescia; Sergent-Marceau painted at least one member in miniature, the Brescian painter Domenico Vantini (1765/6–1821).⁴

Notes

1. Bernardo Falconi et al, Giambattista Gigola 1767–1841 e il Ritratto in Miniatura a Brescia tra Settecento e Ottocento (Milan: Skira, 2001), 161. We are grateful to Bernd Pappe for sharing this resource with us.

2. Antoine François Sergent-Marceau, Costumi dei Popoli Antichi e Moderni (Brescia: B. Bettoni, 1813). On the latter work, see James David Draper, “Thirty Famous People: Drawings by Sergent-Marceau and Bosio in Milan, 1815–1818,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 13 (1978): 113–30.

3. Treated by Stephanie Spence, associate objects conservator, NAMA, in 2019; notes in NAMA curatorial files.

4. According to Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature 1650–1850 (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Amateur, 2008), 463.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1950–1958;

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 239, as Unknown Man.

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. 239, p. 78, (repro.), as Unknown Man.