
Read the visual description
Shown from the shoulders up and from a low vantage point, a man with dark brown skin and black hair looks up and to our left in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our right, but he turns his head to look off with dark eyes. His lower lip comes slightly forward from the upper, and his mustache continues in lines from the corners of his mouth down to his square jawline. His hair creates a halo around his face, and a crimson-red cloth wraps across his shoulders. He is lit from our upper right, and the background brightens from golden yellow along the right edge of the canvas to vivid, shimmering yellow to the left. The portrait is loosely painted, especially in the clothing and the background.
National Gallery of Art · Painting
A Chief of Abyssinia
Henri Regnault
- Date
- c. 1870
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 42.23 × 32.07 cm (16 5/8 × 12 5/8 in.) framed: 75.57 × 64.77 × 10.16 cm (29 3/4 × 25 1/2 × 4 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 2014.136.74
- Credit line
- Corcoran Collection (Gift of Mr. R.M. Kauffmann, 1954)
- Time span
- 1851 to 1875
- Department
- CF
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- French
- Romantic
- Acquired after publication of French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century. Part I: Before Impressionism [1800-1859]
- head and shoulders
- figure
- Figure
- Moor
Provenance
John W. Macartney, Washington, at least in 1897.[1] Rudolph Max Kauffmann [1882-1956], Chevy Chase, Maryland;[2] gift 21 April 1954 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art. [1] Macartney, a Washington banker, lent the painting to an exhibition in 1897 in Washington. [2] It is possible the painting was also owned by Rudolph Kauffmann's father, Samuel H. Kauffman (1829-1906). The elder Kauffmann was one of the owners of _The Washington Evening Star_ newspaper, and his obituary noted that his residence contained "one of the finest private art collections in Washington" ("Samuel H. Kauffmann Dead," _The New York Times_ [16 March 1906]).
Inscription
lower right: AR
NGA object ID 168756. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.