Portrait of the Sculptor Roland

Painted in 1797, or year V in France’s Revolutionary calendar,¹ this intimate half-length portrait by François-André Vincent depicts the 51-year-old sculptor Philippe Laurent Roland (1746–1816). Roland was an exact contemporary and longtime friend of Vincent’s who had recently become his colleague in the Institut, which had been established in 1795 to replace the recently abolished Royal Academy.² Vincent shows Roland from the side, sitting with his body turned slightly toward the viewer and his proper right arm resting casually on the back of his chair. His hand, dominating the center foreground, lightly grips an ébauchoir, a sculptural tool used for working plaster.³ The artist’s dress, consisting of a well-worn jacket, plain waistcoat, and loose shirt with a pleated frill, is decidedly simple, informal, and unpretentious. His powdered hair slightly disheveled, Roland directly engages us, his expression finely nuanced. His level gaze is cool and restrained, perhaps even faintly quizzical in his calm appraisal of the viewer, his brow slightly furrowed. Yet his demeanor also conveys warmth, his parted lips heightening our sense of an intelligent character caught in the moment, his guard lowered in a friendly encounter between peers.

Vincent’s restricted palette is likewise subtly nuanced, ranging from the cool, light grays of the background, the warm browns of Roland’s jacket and the creams and whites of his waistcoat and shirt, to the ruddy flush of his cheeks and the red of the honorific ribbon pinned to the inside of his jacket, offering a counterpoint to the dull green of the chair back. Vincent’s command of his medium is evident throughout, from the lightly brushed background that imparts a wonderful sense of atmosphere, to the firm, indeed sculptural modeling of Roland’s head and hand, whose three-dimensionality is emphasized by the painter’s modulation of light and shade. The resulting sense of physical immediacy, of vital presence, is impressive, and is further emphasized by the tight framing of the composition, the proximity of the sitter to the picture plane, and the suppression of superfluous details.

By 1798, when he exhibited this portrait in the Paris Salon,⁴ Vincent was an eminent figure in the French art world whose public career dated back some three decades. His had been the model academic trajectory. As a precocious teenager in the early 1760s he had enrolled in the studio of Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809), where he proved an exemplary student, eventually winning the Royal Academy’s Grand Prix in 1768, six years ahead of his contemporary Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), who was also a pupil of Vien’s.⁵ This award entitled Vincent to study for several years at the École des Elèves protégés, which had been established to further the humanistic education of Grand Prix winners,⁶ and then embark on a trip to Rome, where he would be a pensionnaire at the French Academy in the Palazzo Mancini from 1771 to 1775.⁷ Soon after his return to Paris, he was formally accepted (agrée) into the Academy,⁸ eventually becoming a full member in 1782 with his reception piece, The Abduction of Orythia, a dramatic mythological scene.⁹ This was followed by his appointment in 1785 as adjunct professor,¹⁰ and then in 1792, in the midst of the Revolution, as full professor at the Academy, not long before the institution was abolished.¹¹ When, after the Thermidorian Reaction, the Institut national des Sciences et des Arts was created in 1795, effectively replacing the old Academy, Vincent was among the founding members of the Literature and Fine Arts section.¹² In his later years he would become such an integral figure to the Institut that pupils of David took to calling it the “Académie Vincent”!¹³

Paralleling Vincent’s rise in the institutional ranks was his noteworthy career in the Salon, where he proved to be one of the most ambitious, inventive, and versatile painters of his generation, and for a period was considered David’s main rival. While large-scale history paintings dominated Vincent’s Salon exhibits and consumed much of his energy, he nonetheless demonstrated an inclination toward portraiture. Personal ties doubtlessly played a role here, as Vincent was not only the son of the well-regarded miniature painter and portrait specialist François Élie Vincent (1708–1790),¹⁴ but he was also the onetime teacher, then romantic partner, and eventually husband of one of the most prominent portraitists of the day, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803).¹⁵

Vincent’s own talents in the genre manifested themselves early on in the brilliant portraits-charges (caricatural portraits) that he drew of his fellow pensionnaires at the French Academy in Rome.¹⁶ The director at the time, Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700–1777), who witnessed Vincent’s work on early paintings like the 1775 Portrait of Monseigneur Ruffo,¹⁷ underscored Vincent’s great promise as portraitist, reporting that same year to the comte d’Angiviller (1730–1809), the director of the Bâtiments du Roi (essentially the Culture Minister): “Our students are all working zealously. Vincent has recently made some portraits showing very good taste; it seems to me that this will be the area in which he should most like to occupy himself.”¹⁸

Portraiture certainly played an important part in Vincent’s Salon career following his return to Paris. Between 1777, the year of his Salon debut, and 1801, the year of his final Salon, he exhibited fourteen paintings that were identified as portraits.¹⁹ These represent more than a quarter of his total Salon production, which amounted to at least forty-nine paintings. Portraits of artist friends form a notable subset of these Salon pictures, from the portraits of the painter Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743–1811) and the architect Pierre Rousseau (1751–1829), both shown in the 1777 Salon, to the portrait of the dramatist Pierre Jean Baptiste Choudard, known as Desforges (1746–1806), shown in the 1791 Salon, and ultimately the portrait of the sculptor Roland, shown in 1798.²⁰ The friendship ties to which these portraits bore fraternal witness were vital to Vincent’s own self-image, reflecting as they did his own status and position in contemporary artistic life.

For his part, Roland had become a figure of considerable distinction by the late 1790s, though his trajectory had certainly been more irregular and less conventionally academic than Vincent’s. Born near Lille in 1746, he emerged from a humble artisanal context. By 1764 he had moved to Paris and entered the sculpture studio of Augustin Pajou (1730–1809), an influential academician who would have a determining effect on his career. Roland gained invaluable practical experience by working with Pajou on important decorative commissions for the monarchy during the 1760s, most notably at the Palais Royal and Château de Versailles.²¹ Through such work he earned enough to pay his own way to Italy, where he enjoyed a five-year sojourn from 1771 to 1776, which coincided with Vincent’s own time in Italy. “It is as if [Roland] conferred upon himself his own Prix de Rome but without feeling the same constraints as the pensioners of the Académie,” James David Draper has aptly remarked.²² If Vincent and Roland had not yet become friends during this period, they were certainly well acquainted by the time Vincent attended Roland’s nuptials in 1782.²³

Upon Roland’s return to Paris, he became Pajou’s practitioner of preference, entrusted with translating his former master’s models into marble,²⁴ and he soon embarked upon his own official academic career with Pajou’s strong encouragement. In 1782, the year that Vincent became a full member, Roland was accepted (agrée) into the Royal Academy, and the following year he submitted a sketch for his official reception piece, Samson. He never moved past the rank of agrée, however, as the final marble version of this sculpture was finished only after the Academy was suppressed in 1793.²⁵ Contributing to this delay were a number of important projects that commanded Roland’s attention in the 1780s. Thanks to Pajou’s influence, for example, he received a commission for a full-length statue of Louis II, Prince de Condé, which was to be part of the series celebrating great Frenchmen conceived by the Comte d’Angiviller.²⁶ And thanks to his father-in-law, Nicolas-Marie Potain (1713–1796), royal architect and comptroller of works at the chateau de Fontainebleau, he received a commission to provide sculptural decorations in the private apartments of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.²⁷ With the Revolution, Roland adapted to political circumstance and set to work on some allegorical representations on the Republican theme of Law for the Pantheon.²⁸ Though he had never become a full member of the Academy, his experience and stature were such that he would be one of the founding members of the new Institut along with Vincent in 1795;²⁹ it was that same year that he finally exhibited his marble version of Samson in the Salon.³⁰

Fig 1. Philippe-Laurent Roland (1746–1816), Augustin Pajou (1730–1809), sculptor, 1797. Terracotta, 71 x 51 x 31 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, RF778.

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Like Vincent, Roland was a versatile talent who demonstrated an aptitude for portraiture, and who exhibited portraits, both busts and medallions, on numerous occasions in the Salon.³¹ Perhaps the most personally meaningful of these, a plaster bust of his master, mentor, and friend Pajou, was shown in the 1798 Salon (to be followed by a final marble version in 1800) (fig. 1). The resonance between Roland’s portrait of Pajou and Vincent’s portrait of Roland is immediately apparent, in their sober realism, sympathetic characterizations, and similarly informal dress. It was a sculptor very much in the mold of the venerable Pajou that Vincent was presenting in his depiction of Roland.³²

To grasp the public import of Vincent’s portrait in 1798, an understanding of the turbulent history of the Salon in the wake of the Revolution is key. In 1791, the Salon was democratized and liberty was the new watchword. Open to all talents, it was no longer the exclusive precinct of the privileged members of the Royal Academy, Vincent and Roland among them. In the Salon catalogue, artists would no longer be listed in order of their academic rank, but according to the far more arbitrary arrangement of the Salon hang (meaning that an individual artist’s submissions were dispersed throughout the catalogue). Furthermore, no titles of distinction would accompany artists’ names, and these names would follow rather than precede the title of the artworks, the idea being that works were to be judged exclusively on their merits, rather than on the basis of their maker’s status and reputation. The message was clear: established artists were up for critical reevaluation and formerly privileged academicians had to prove themselves on a new, level playing field.³³

The consequences of this revolution in the Salon were not surprising. There was a dramatic spike in the number of artists exhibiting and the number of works exhibited.³⁴ The hierarchical supremacy of history painting was challenged by a rising tide of work in the lesser genres, portraiture included.³⁵ Even more troubling was the influx of poor, substandard paintings — widely denigrated as “croûtes,” or daubs.³⁶ These threatened the very credibility of the Salon, leading numerous artists to abstain from exhibiting, which in turn depressed visitor numbers.

The backlash was swift. By the mid-1790s there was widespread agreement that new reforms and quality controls were urgently required to help maintain France’s cultural status. In 1795, to address the egalitarian disarray of the catalogue, artists were grouped by medium and listed alphabetically, with an individual artist’s submissions once again listed all together under his or her name.³⁷ In 1796, artists’ names would be accompanied for the first time by those of their masters, providing a kind of external guarantee of the work’s quality.³⁸ Most importantly, a jury was instituted for the selection of works, in response to vociferous demands by the artists themselves.³⁹ The 1798 Salon was the first of the post-Revolutionary Salons with an admission jury, and the results were immediately apparent. Mediocre artists were discouraged from submitting, and established talents were encouraged once again to put themselves forward. The number of works on display was substantially reduced,⁴⁰ overall quality was perceptibly improved, and attendance figures were up dramatically (judging by the catalogue sales).⁴¹ There was a clear consensus that, thanks to the new meritocratic principles governing its organization, the 1798 Salon was the best of the decade.⁴²

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The tension between democratic egalitarianism and meritocratic elitism that the Salons of the 1790s brought to the fore also informs Vincent’s portrait of Roland and its public presentation. In many ways the painting is emblematic of the democratic tendencies in Revolutionary-era male portraiture. The emphasis is upon capturing the model’s physiognomy and character in a frank and candid manner. The elaborate décor that traditionally might have spoken to his wealth, social position, tastes, and occupation has been dispensed with, the artist opting instead for a plain, light-toned background that simply highlights the figure, whose only professional attribute in this case is the humble wooden ébauchoir. Roland’s pose likewise reads as natural and unaffected. There is none of the rhetorical emphasis of gesture which persisted in ancien régime portraiture; Labille-Guiard’s pastel portrait of Roland’s master Pajou, executed in 1782, provides an instructive point of comparison here (fig. 2). A related shift is evident in Roland’s sober dress. The brightly colored velvets and ornamental lace that we still see, for example, in Labille-Guiard’s 1782 portrait of Vincent (fig. 3), have given way to simple brown cloth, plain linen, and a deliberate négligence of self-presentation. This sartorial revolution, already gathering momentum in the 1770s and 1780s, promoted notions of freedom and naturalness, in keeping with the philosophical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and in democratic opposition to the artificial strictures and sumptuary codes associated with court culture. Dispensing with wigs was part of this trend as well.⁴³

Fig. 4. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824), Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley, Deputy for Saint-Domingue, 1797. Oil on canvas, 158 x 111 cm. Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, MV 4616; INV 4962; LP 105.

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But if Vincent’s portrait of Roland was imbued with the democratic ethos of the Revolution, it also self-consciously positioned both sculptor and painter as members of a new cultural elite. Given the tumultuous changes the Salon had recently undergone, it was significant that Vincent gave his address in the Salon catalogue as “Palais national des Sciences et des Arts” and exhibited his portrait with the title “Le portrait du C. Roland, sculpteur, membre de l’Institut national des Sciences et Arts”⁴⁴ — a title that mimicked the formula for portraits of academicians under the ancien régime.⁴⁵ Vincent was emphasizing his and Roland’s shared professional status as members of the Institut, a body that would effectively become the new Academy, and he was doing so in the first Salon to be juried after several years of radical, and in many eyes failed, democratic experiment. Professional distinctions and high standards, and the new national institutions charged with maintaining them, mattered immensely to these men.⁴⁶ Moderate Republicans both, they had paid their dues and risen through the ranks over the course of many years, and now they were identifying themselves with the meritocratic principles of the new order.

Telling in this connection is the honorific red ribbon conspicuously affixed to Roland’s jacket. This detail is likely a later addition that refers to the Légion d’honneur, the order of merit instituted by Napoleon in 1802. Roland became a chevalier in the order in 1806 and it may have been around that time that the ribbon was added, probably by Vincent himself (assuming that Roland was in possession of the portrait).⁴⁷ Certainly the early 19th-century inscription on the back of the canvas emphasizes the importance of such marks of distinction: “Philippe Laurent Roland [,] sculptor [,] member / of the Legion of Honor, of the Institut de France [,] of the / former Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture of Paris / and of several learned societies […].”⁴⁸

Fig. 5. Louis-Léopold Boilly (French, 1761–1845), Gathering of Artists in the Studio of Isabey, 1797-98. Oil on canvas, 71 x 111 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre, RF1290bis.

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In the end, Vincent’s portrait of Roland did not attract much attention at the 1798 Salon. More than a third of the 442 paintings on display were portraits,⁴⁹ and only a few standouts occupied the critics. Among these were the imposing portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley (1746–1805), the first Black deputy of the Convention, by David’s pupil Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (1767–1824) (fig. 4),⁵⁰ and a small-scale group portrait by Louis Léopold Boilly (1761–1845), Gathering of Artists in the Studio of Isabey (fig. 5).⁵¹ The latter presented an informal cenacle of artists, mostly fashionable genre painters, who constituted a sort of youthful counterpart to the official Institut with its older, more established representatives. Quite a pronounced generation gap separates Vincent’s portrait from Boilly’s.

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Vincent’s portrait was also overshadowed, it should be acknowledged, by his own major contribution that year, Agriculture, a painting that had occupied much of his attention since 1795 (fig. 6). Executed for a private patron in Toulouse, this large-scale work presented agricultural labor as the foundation of national prosperity and as a critical object lesson for an enlightened education. Part allegory, family portrait, genre scene, animal painting, and landscape, it eluded easy classification and was one of the artist’s, and indeed the entire period’s, most original paintings.⁵²

The portrait of Roland did nonetheless generate some discussion. One particularly mean-spirited “amateur” wrote: “It’s true to life, I don’t doubt it. It’s well drawn, who would dare doubt that? But this is not a good portrait.”⁵³ No explanation was offered and the eminent Vincent scholar Jean-Pierre Cuzin has found the comment mystifying.⁵⁴ It was, however, a minority opinion, which took exception to the fulsome praise for Vincent that appeared elsewhere. We read in the Journal d’indications, for instance:

Although one is less astonished to find the perfection of the portrait in a great history painter, one must nevertheless pay a tribute of admiration to an artist who unites with the highest degree of talent perfect resemblance with much strength and truth. To these combined qualities one also finds in the work of citizen Vincent that life which is the soul of portraiture. The artist has not just contented himself in rendering the face; he has also known how to express the character and spirit of the person.⁵⁵

All that was missing, in this critic’s eyes, was a little more transparency in the shadows.

To convince ourselves of the “perfect resemblance” of Vincent’s portrait, we can consider it alongside a striking self-portrait bust by Roland, executed about a decade earlier (fig. 7).⁵⁶ As for insight into Roland’s “character and spirit,” we are fortunate to have a firsthand physiognomic description written by Roland’s most famous pupil, David d’Angers (1788–1856):

Roland was of average height and delicate complexion. His ruddiness announced a sanguine temperament, but the nervous element predominated in him. His walk, although calm, partook of his moral energy. His movements were often brusque, his speech short. His head was developed, his forehead very broad…; his skull offered an extremely pronounced protuberance, that of perseverance. The features of his face bore the imprint of his habitual disposition of mind, the sharp and penetrating eyes like those of an artist, the mouth large but well delineated. Like men occupied with serious matters, he spoke little in his social relations. He showed a dignified reserve and loyal sincerity, heightened by a great austerity of principle.⁵⁷

These invaluable words do much to bring the similarly dignified, reserved and sincere portrait by Vincent to life.

• Scott C. Allan
  October 2020