Politics and Portraits in the United States and France during the Age of Revolution

by T. Lawrence Larkin (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays explore the way portraits intersected with politics during the Revolutionary and Imperial Eras in The United States and France.

The portraits examined in this book highlight the challenges artists faced in the conceptualization, concretization, and promotion of political identity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Portrait scholars T. Lawrence Larkin, Brandon Brame Fortune, Philippe Bordes, Amy Freund, and Margaretta Lovell provide thematic introductions dedicated to separate trends in the fashioning of Revolutionary and Federal/Imperial identity including the challenges of representing a strong leader, republican assembly, free citizen, and the uncovering of overlooked people or patterns. These thematic introductions are followed by essays that offer case studies of artists negotiating the desires and interests of their prominent patrons including Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, among others. These essays analyze how artists in the United States and France grappled with how abstract notions of individual liberty, delegated powers, and collective governance can be invested in drawn, painted, printed, or mapped likenesses of high-ranking individuals during the Age of Revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781944466206
Publisher:	Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

T. Lawrence Larkin is an American artist and art historian. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art History at Montana State University, Bozeman.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction T. Lawrence Larkin 1

Part I Images of Authority In France And The United State

Part I Introduction T. Lawrence Larkin 19

The U.S. Congress's State Portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette: The Politics of Display and Displacement at the Capitol, 1800-1814 T. Lawrence Larkin 21

Bonaparte as a Republican David O'Brien 39

Man + Horse: Repurposing the Equestrian Portrait in the Post-Revolutionary Era Heather McPherson 55

Part II The Portrait As Diplomatic Gift

Part II Introduction Brandon Brame Fortune 75

Gilbert Stuart's "Lansdowne" Portrait of George Washington: From Diplomatic Gift to State Portrait Ellen G. Miles 77

Portraits for Diplomacy: Gilbert Stuart's Pendant Portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Gaye S. Wilson 91

Rivalries and Dissensions within the Maison de l'Empereur: Napoleon's Portraitists and the Production of Diplomatic Gifts Cyril Lécosse 105

Part III Republicanism and The Politician's Portrait

Part III Introduction Philippe Bordes 119

Faces of the Nation: Physionotrace Portraits and the Invention of Political Modernity Guillaume Mazeau 121

Representing the Representatives: Portraiture and Sovereignty in Revolutionary France, 1789-1795 Gerrit Walczak 135

Signs of Power: Bonaparte and the Concordat of 1801 Kathryn Calley Galitz 152

Part IV Patriotism and the Family Portrait

Part IV Introduction Amy Freund 167

Woman on a Wire: How Marie-Antoinette, d'Angiviller, and Vigée Le Brun Confounded Critics by Balancing Majesty and Maternity at the Salon of 1787 T. Lawrence Larkin 169

Architectural Portraits: Mount Vernon, Monticello, and La Grange Kevin D. Murphy 191

Politicizing Portraiture: Family Portraits and Visual Rhetoric in Revolutionary France Marlen Schneider 208

Part V The "Face" and "Body" of Early Repuelican Capital Cities' Paris, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington

Part V Introduction Margaretta M. Lovell 225

Urban Portraits, Two Centuries Ago: Faces, Bodies, and Footprints Jeffrey A. Cohen 227

From Portrait to Plan: Mapping Capital Cities in France and the United States Min Kyung Lee 244

Bibliography 261

About the Contributors 281

Index 285