Self-Portrait with a Visor
c. 1776
Medium
Pastel on blue laid paper, mounted on canvas
Dimensions
45.7 × 37.4 cm (18 × 14 3/4 in.)
Classification
pastel
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
102131
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Over a century after its creation, the French novelist Marcel Proust said of Jean-Siméon Chardin’s audacious self-portrait, “This old oddity is so intelligent, so crazy . . . above all, so much of an artist.” In a fitting finale to a long, successful career as a painter of still lifes and genre scenes, Chardin turned in his last decade to a new medium, pastel, and to a new subject matter, portraits (primarily self-portraits). Eye problems arising from lead-based oil paint poisoning were the part...
About the Artist
Jean Siméon Chardin · 1699–1779
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, born on November 2, 1699, in Paris to a cabinetmaker father who crafted billiard tables, grew up immersed in the city's artisan world on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice. His early training came through apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes, where he honed academic drawing techniques, and Noël-Nicolas Coypel, whose assignment to copy a musket ...