Young Gentleman

Dateca. 1845

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 30 1/8 x 25 3/8in. (76.5 x 64.5cm) and Framed: 36 1/4 x 31 3/8in.

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1970.100.1

DescriptionOil portrait half-length of seated young man, turned slightly to his right. He sits in a rosewood painted side-chair with agitated coloration, writing on a piece of paper resting on a table of the same color to his right. He holds a white quill with blue ink in his right hand and a small open brown covered book in his left. Inexplicably behind him as through an open window, even though there is no window sill, is a landscape scene of cold grey sea with several stick figures rowing a boat and an odd shaped tower in the distance. The sky is filled with rays of sun breaking out under some dark blue grey clouds, and the shore line has cloudlike rocks, the clouds in the sky rise upwards in to a violent appearing sky filled with red-black clouds which blend into nervous diagonal lines slanting from upper left to lower right which blend into a dark area behind the sitter's head and merge into red diagonal drapery in the upper right corner. The young man wears a black coat open to show his black vest and pants and white shirt front and large black bow neckcloth tied in an elaborate knot. The folds or wrinkles of this costume are indicated by a series of curving lines. His face is oval, his nose large and delineated by deep black shadow on the far side of it. His eyes wide open and staring and blue, with light brown hair, parted on the left side, and reaching to his ears. His hands seem large and crudely formed of geometric shapes to create volume, his cheeks smooth, although the lines around his mouth are clearly delineated. The agitation of the background and the painted furniture is the most noteworthy characteristic of this painting.
Label TextAn overwhelming sense of drama is created in this por¬trait. Almost no passages have been flatly painted, and as a result, the eye is kept busy wandering over the entire canvas. While such a treatment unquestionably dis¬tracts attention from the face, a portrait's normal focal point, it does unify the composition, and unusual vitality is achieved through the repetition of swirling shapes. The painter used lines and folds everywhere, complicating the jacket and waistcoat creases. Fleshy folds in the hands are certainly exaggerated in a sitter so young and slim, and the grained surfaces of the table, chair, and book add their own note of nervous energy. Many people claim to see a tiny smiling face in the graining pattern on the chair's scroll back.

The unidentified artist has made a rather fantastic transition between the conventional red swagged drap¬ery at upper right and top and a stormy blue sky at middle left. There is no delineation per se between the two; choppy strokes of red and blue intermingle, con¬tributing to the background confusion. While over¬simplified and rather garish sunbeams stream down at left below the dark clouds, an area of sky bordering the sitter's collar is rendered equally bright, curiously suggesting that light also emanates from the earth be¬yond his shoulder. Posing a portrait subject in front of a diagonally draped window had been an extremely popular convention earlier, but the formula had fallen from general favor by 1845. This may account for the artist's confusion in rendering the cliché.

ProvenancePurchased from Paul Hopkins, Deltaville, VA