- Museum number
Portrait of a woman; nearly half-length to front, her head slightly to left, wearing a head-dress with train
Black and red chalk
- Production date
Height: 289 millimetres
Width: 196 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The drawing of portraits in colour, achieving a pictorial effect through the mixing of red and black chalk, seems to have been a French invention. The earliest extant example ('Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins', c.1460-65, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin) is by Jean Fouquet (c.1420-c.1481), and it is probable that Jean Perréal (c.1455-1530) and Jean Bourdichon (c.1457-1521), court artists to François I (1494-1547) also made use of the process.(n.1) The first artist for whom there survives a large group of coloured drawings is Jean Clouet. Though he did not invent the technique, Clouet is credited with perfecting it.
Clouet is recorded in the employ of the French court in 1516, working principally as a portraitist. There is little reason to doubt that most, if not all, of his known drawings were preparatory to paintings. Often he drew the heads alone or indicated costume in the most rudimentary fashion. There is no attempt to hide alterations or pentimenti, and in a few cases colour notes for the clothing appear on the verso.(n.2) Clouet's style is characterized by a delicate handling of the chalk; the planes of the face are typically modelled in soft diagonal hatching, from upper right to lower left, blending black and red to produce naturalistic flesh tones, effects that have been compared to the sfumato of Leonardo. In addition, the British Museum drawing uses graining - a manner of shading with chalk that exploits the texture of the paper to create a half-tone - for the shadows beneath the jawline, the nostrils and the lips. The composition adheres to Clouet's favoured formula, showing the sitter bust length, in three-quarter view, her glance oblique. The artist's attention was focused on her luminous and untroubled countenance, with only minimal indications for her dress. It was, almost certainly, drawn from life.
Whether and to what degree Jean Clouet's preparatory drawings were appreciated as independent works of art during his lifetime is not known. Alexandra Zvereva has plausibly suggested that at least the majority would have remained in his studio and gone at his death to his son François, also a portraitist.(n.3) Presumably, at some point while Catherine de Médicis (1519-89) was building her collection of portrait drawings, François Clouet either gave or sold his father's drawings to her. Many of them were annotated decades after Jean Clouet's death by either Catherine or one of her secretaries. In a number of cases, including the present sheet, the drawings lack annotations, most probably indicating that the identity of the sitter was not known to Catherine.
Text by P. Stein, 2005 as cited below.
1 Chantilly, 2002, pp. 19-21. On drawings in red and black chalk by Jean Perréal, see Nicole Reynaud, 'Deux portraits inconnus par Jean Perréal au Louvre', `Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France`, XLVI, no.4, October 1996, pp.36-46. On Fouquet, see Jean Fouijuet, Peintre et enlumineur du XVe siècle, éd. François Avril, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, 25 March-22 June 2003, pp.118-20; 142-8, under nos 6, 12-13.
2 See e.g. Chantilly, 2002, p.28, no.2, and p.135, no.63.
3 Ibid., p.28.
Lit.: E. Moreau-Nélaton, 'Les Clouet et leur émules', Paris, 1924, no. 34; H. Kurita and M. Koshikawa, in exhib. cat., Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, 'French drawings from the British Museum: from Fontainebleau to Versailles', 2002, no. 4; A. Zvereva (ed.), exhib. cat., Musée Condé, Chantilly, `Les Clouet de Catherine de Médicis: chefs-d'oeuvre graphiques du Musée Condé,` Paris, 2002; P. Stein, in exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art and London, BM, 'French Drawings from Clouet to Seurat', 2005, no. 1 (with previous literature); A. Zvereva, 'Portraits dessinés de la cour des Valois: Les Clouet de Catherine de Médicis', Paris, 2011, no. 180; C. Scaillliérez et al., Francois 1er et l'art des Pays-Bas, Paris, 2017, cat. no. 83.
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
1984, BM, Master Drawings & Watercolours, no. 114
2002 April-June, Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Mus of Art, 'French Drawings from the British Museum'
2002 July-Sep, Tokyo, Nat Mus of Western Art, 'French Drawings from the British Museum'
2005/6 Nov-Jan, New York, Met Mus of Art, Clouet to Seurat/BM
2006 June-Oct, BM, Clouet to Seurat/BM
2017-2018 16 Oct-15 Jan, Paris, Louvre, Francois 1er et l'art des Pays-Bas
- Acquisition date
- Acquisition notes
- May have been one of the drawings then attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger in the Godolphin sale 1803, Lot 33, 'A Man's Portrait, ditto a Lady's, small...'
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number