Met acquires Gerard portrait of Talleyrand

October 10 2012

Picture: Metropolitan Museum

I've always had a soft spot for Francois Gerard's portraits - one my earliest sleepers was a Gerard. So I'm grateful to the indispensable Tribune de l'Art for alerting us to a fine new acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum in New York of a portrait of Talleyrand by Gerard.

I've always been fascinated by French neo-classical portraitists, and how they managed to survive, or not, the tribulations of the French Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration. Jacques-Louis David, for example, was a better painter than Gerard, his pupil - but Gerard was undoubtedly the better politician. He ended up as a Baron, and the pre-eminent court painter, while David had to endure years of exile in Belgium. One perhaps can see a partial explanation of Gerard's success in this pleasingly flattering portrait of Talleyrand, himself one of the great survivors of the age.

Talleyrand, incidentally, once owned the Van Dyck Portrait of a Young Girl we discovered in Paris a couple of years ago. 

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