Charles Joshua Chaplin

Belle Femme en Déshabillé - 19th Century French Portrait of Young Society Beauty

circa 1880

Charles Joshua Chaplin’s celebrated portraits of young women are reminiscent of the 18th-century romanticism of Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) and François Boucher (1703–70) but his subjects are nevertheless recognizable as more modern Belle Epoque women. The critical and commercial success of Chaplin’s beautifully lit portraits of sensual young women captured en déshabillé established him as one of the foremost French academic painters of the period. By the late 50s, Chaplin was being inundated with commissions from the French aristocracy requesting portraits of their wives and daughters. Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, was also a big fan and appointed him an artist of the court. The Empress and her husband’s enthusiastic support came in handy when, in 1859, his portrait Aurora was banned by the judges of the Salon in Paris for being "too erotically suggestive". The disqualification order was subsequently overturned when Napoleon III himself sprung to Chaplin’s defense. During his lifetime, Chaplin was awarded numerous medals at the Salon in Paris and, in 1865, he was declared a Chevalier and later Officer of la Légion d’Honneur (1881). Today his works are held in the collections of the Louvre in Paris, Hermitage in St Petersburg, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.