Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger (1774): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger (1774) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun (French, 1755–1842).

The work and its context

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

This signed portrait reinterprets a well-known pastel by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour of the important French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the younger (1704–1778). The sculptor, seen toward the end of his life, appears in working garb. His close-cropped grey hair, frank, observant stare, and bemused smile all demonstrate the closeness of the young painter to the elder sculptor. The work also speaks to Vigée-LeBrun’s interest in naturalistic portraiture (as opposed to her more formal, commissioned portraits), and—in the handling of the paint as well as her source image—her debt to pastel painting, her original medium.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger
• Date: 1774
• Creator attribution: Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun (French, 1755–1842)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 58.6 x 51.9 x 5.7 cm (23 1/16 x 20 7/16 x 2 1/4 in.); Unframed: 37.4 x 44.1 cm (14 3/4 x 17 3/8 in.)
• Collection: P - French 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2011.49

A detail from the museum

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was a sculptor--there's one of his works in the CMA's collection.

Collection credit

Bequest of Dr. Paul J. Vignos Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hôtel Drouot. Tableaux et dessins anciens, aquarelles, gouaches, pastels, gravures. 1912.

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.