JACQUES DUMONT, called DUMONT LE ROMAIN
Paris 1701–1781 Paris
Bust-length Portrait of a Boy, in Three-quarter View to the Right
Inscribed, lower left, dumont Leromain
Red chalk
8 ½ x 6 ¹⁵⁄₁₆ inches
216 x 176 mm
Provenance
W. M. Brady & Co., New York, 2007
Private collection, New York
Exhibitions
New York, W. M. Brady & Co., Master Drawings, Oil Sketches and Sculpture, 1700-1900, 23 January–15 February 2007, cat. no. 4, illustrated
Literature
L.-A. Prat, Le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 2017, p.141
Son of the sculptor, Pierre Dumont (b. 1650), and brother of the architect François (1687-1726), Jacques Dumont was a painter and engraver of history and genre subjects, and portraits. He had a long and successful career at the Académie (first entering as an academician in 1728; becoming a professor in 1736; rector in 1752; chancellor in 1768; and honorary director in 1763) and enjoyed the patronage of King Louix XV.¹ His nickname, le Romain, originates from his trip to Italy (apparently walking there) between 1720/21–1725, where he studied not only antiquity and the Renaissance, but also the work of contemporary artists in Rome such as Benedetto Luti (1666-1724). He exhibited at the Salon from 1737 through 1761.
Drawn from life in three-quarter view, the sitter in our sheet appears again, slightly older, in another red chalk drawing by the artist, Head of a Young Man in Profile (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland; inv. no. 3219.² The model in both drawings shows the same strongly drawn and spiky hair, slightly upturned nose, bow-like lips, and distinctively indented right ear lobe, and both drawings are inscribed in the same hand. Similar red chalk studies by the artist, showing children and adolescents, can be found in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (formerly in the Tessin collection)³ and in Weimar (Goethe-Nationalmuseum-Schuchardt I, S.319 Nr. 986).⁴
For a concise biography of the artist, see A. L. Clark, Jr. (ed.), et al., Mastery & Elegance: Two Centuries of French Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, Harvard University Art Museums, and elsewhere, 1998-2000, p. 393.
We are grateful to Chantal Mauduit, the expert on Dumont le Romain, for confirming that the sitter in both drawings is the same (oral communication, 21 September 2006).
P. Bjurström, French Drawings: Eighteenth Century; Nationalmuseum: Drawings in Swedish Public Collections, vol. 4, Stockholm, 1982, cat. nos. 939-40, illustrated.
H. Mildenberger et al., From Callot to Greuze: French Drawings from Weimar, exhibition catalogue, Weimar, Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstammlungen, New York, The Frick Collection, and Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, 2006, pp. 180-81, cat. no. 63, illustrated.