Standing Man
1801 to 1825
Medium
pen and brown ink with brown wash heightened with white on paper prepared with wash
Dimensions
Overall: 34.3 x 23.9 cm (13 1/2 x 9 7/16 in.) support: 45.3 x 33.5 cm (17 13/16 x 13 3/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Bertha Leubsdorf in memory of her husband, Karl Leubsdorf
Accession Number
1984.30.4
Art Historical Context
**Standing Man** by Paularni (1804–1866) is a captivating early 19th drawing that showcases the artist's masterful draftsmanship. Created between 1801 and 1825, this work captures a solitary male figure in a poised, stance, rendered on paper prepared with wash for added depth. Gavarni, a renowned French illustrator and caricaturist famous for his witty depictions of Parisian life in publications like *Le Charari*, began his career honing such figure studies, which laid the foundation for his later satirical lithographs. The medium—pen and brown ink with brown wash heightened with white—exempl...
About the Artist
Paul Gavarni
Paul Gavarni, born Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier on January 13, 1804, in Paris to a cooper father from Burgundy and mother Marie-Monique Thiémet—whose brother, painter Guillaume Thiémet, served as his godfather—began his career far from the art world. As a youth, he worked in a machine factory and studied mechanical drawing at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in 1818, followed by evening classe...