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Henri-Joseph Hesse
Portrait of a Gentleman in a Redingote by student od Jean Louis David drawing

circa 1820

About the Item

An exceptional ink, wash and graphite portrait of a gentleman by Henri-Joseph Hesse, dating from circa 1820, the time of the Bourbon restoration in France. It depicts a dashing figure wearing a redingote. The man’s redingote, worn in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was a full-skirted, short-waisted, double-breasted overcoat adapted from the English riding coat. The work is executed in a style very typical for Hesse, with the clothing painted in wash and the face kept in graphite, giving the work an interesting and unusual intensity. Active as a draughtsman, painter and lithographer, but perhaps best known as a miniaturist, Henri-Joseph Hesse was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David and the painter and miniaturist Jean-Baptise Isabey. He exhibited intermittently at the Salons between 1808 and 1833, making his debut with a painting of A Young Woman Watching a Sleeping Child. At the Salon of 1810 he showed portraits and a number of miniatures, and won a second-class medal. Hesse travelled to Germany in 1815, but was back in Paris by the following year. Hesse became known in particular for his miniatures, although he also gained some important commissions for official portraits, notably one of the Duchesse de Berri, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1819. He won another medal at the last Salon in which he took part, in 1833. Hesse also produced a number of lithographic portraits. Works by Henri-Joseph Hesse are today in the collections of the Versailles Castle, the Musée Condé in Chantilly, the Fondation Custodia (Frits Lugt Collection) and the Louvre in Paris, as well as the Morgan Library and Museum i New York, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid and the Museum Briner und Kern in Winterthur. (Credit to Stephen Ongpin Fine Art for much of the biographical information on the artist). Our portrait is signed and dared indistinctly 1823 (?) to the centre left. The oval measurements without the frame are 24 x 18 cm.
  • Creator:
    Henri-Joseph Hesse (1781 - 1849, French)
  • Creation Year:
    circa 1820
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 13.78 in (35 cm)Width: 11.82 in (30 cm)Depth: 0.4 in (1 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Toning to paper, not examined out of the frame.
  • Gallery Location:
    Norwich, GB
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU991310692652

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