Portrait of a Man | Yale University Art Gallery

1680–95

Joseph Vivien was the first artist to exhibit large-scale pastels that imitate oil paintings, works that were intended to be glazed, framed, and displayed like paintings. He gained international recognition for the verisimilitude that he achieved in these pastels and enjoyed a career as a court painter in Germany. Many of his portraits were widely known through reproductive engravings. The identity of the sitter in this drawing is unknown, but based on the fashion of multiple ribbon bows behind a lace cravat, the portrait can be dated to the late 1680s or early 1690s, and it may be Vivien’s earliest extant work.

Medium: Pastel on blue-gray paper, mounted on wood panel
Dimensions: framed: 30 × 25 in. (76.2 × 63.5 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Edward B. Greene, B.A. 1900, in memory of Emerson Tuttle, B.A. 1914, M.A. (Hon) 1930
Accession Number: 1946.110
Geography: Made in France
Culture: French
Period: 17th century
Classification: Drawings
Disclaimer: Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance

With the dealer Adolphe le Goupy, probably early 20th century; Edward B. Greene, Cleveland

Bibliography

Lisa Hodermarsky, Suzanne Boorsch, and John J. Marciari, Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2006), 6, 28, 29, 31n.13, 178–79, no. 58, ill.

Object copyright

No Copyright - United States

Additional information

Object/Work type

portraits

Signed

Label on verso: [J]oseph Vivien/Lyon (Rhone) en 1657/ [B]onn, pres Cologne en 1735

Technical metadata and APIs

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