René-Charles Dassy and His Brother Jean-Baptiste-Claude-Amédé Dassy (1850): Art, History and Details

René-Charles Dassy and His Brother Jean-Baptiste-Claude-Amédé Dassy (1850) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hippolyte Jean Flandrin (French, 1809–1864).

The work and its context

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

This double portrait depicts two brothers dressed in the height of fashion for the 1850s, clearly asserting their social status. Jean-Baptiste (left, age 23) carries gloves and a walking stick. René-Charles (right, age 25) wears an embroidered black velvet suit in the exotic à la grecque mode (in the Greek style) inspired by the Greek war of independence (1821–32). Flandrin represents the figures in an academic style emphasizing line over color, reflecting his training as a pupil of J. A. D. Ingres.

Object facts

• Title: René-Charles Dassy and His Brother Jean-Baptiste-Claude-Amédé Dassy
• Date: 1850
• Creator attribution: Hippolyte Jean Flandrin (French, 1809–1864)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas, original frame
• Dimensions: Framed: 173.5 x 134 x 14 cm (68 5/16 x 52 3/4 x 5 1/2 in.); Unframed: 133.4 x 92.7 cm (52 1/2 x 36 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2000.17

A detail from the museum

Thin walking sticks, like the one pictured here, were trendy accessories at the time.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “French 19th-Century Double Portrait Acquired; Jazz Bowl Purchased at Auction,” June 19, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• "A Selection of 2000 Museum Acquisitions." Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques 152 (December 2000): 17–49.
• Bellenger, Sylvain. "Seeing Double." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 41, no. 1 (January 2001): 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.