Jacques Luc Barbier-Valbonne (1796): Art, History and Details

Jacques Luc Barbier-Valbonne (1796) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Baptiste Isabey (French, 1767–1855).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The French Revolution (1789–99) disrupted all traditional hierarchies, including that of art, which habitually placed history painting in the highest regard. When Isabey exhibited this portrait of his friend and fellow artist in the 1796 salon, drawings had taken on significance as a more personal and egalitarian form of art. Isabey depicts Barbier as a solid citizen of the new Republic. The tasseled cap and embroidered jacket recall Barbier’s service as a hussar, a type of soldier; the vest, cravat, and “dog-ear” hairstyle were popular among young men in Paris at the time. Traditionally, however, a fashionable man would not be shown smoking, an activity usually associated with lower classes. Isabey’s focus on the long pipe and steady stream of smoke made the drawing especially populist for the time.

Object facts

• Title: Jacques Luc Barbier-Valbonne
• Date: 1796
• Creator attribution: Jean-Baptiste Isabey (French, 1767–1855)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Black chalk with stumping, heightened with white gouache on beige wove paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 26.2 x 20.7 cm (10 5/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1950.496

Collection credit

Gift of Harry D. Kendrick

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wehn, James. “The 18th-Century Selfie: A new exhibition looks at the role of prints and drawings in pre- and post-revolutionary France.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 4 (July/August 2016): 8-9.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.