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A pale-skinned man sits facing our left as he plays a harp while turning his face to smile at us in this vertical portrait painting. He looks out the corners of his light blue eyes under arched, gray brows. He has a rounded nose, pale pink lips, and a round face. Gray hair is brushed back from his high forehead and curls around his ears. His long fingers rest on the strings of the harp, and the ends of strings curl like wind-loosened strands of hair along the top edge. The man wears a pale mauve-purple cravat, and his snow-white, long-sleeved chemise is untucked and loose around his thighs. The cuff we see is open and folded back over a bright white shirt edged with lace. His dusky rose-pink breeches are unbuttoned at the knee over white stockings. The square-seated chair on which he sits is carved with garlands and floral patterns, which are gilded gold. The seat itself is topaz blue, and it has a low back. A similarly ornamented and gilded table along the back of the room holds a portfolio and roll of papers, the tooled and gilded spines of books, and a statuette to the right. The pale pinkish-orange statuette shows a woman holding a tablet and wearing a long, loose robe and head covering. Her body angles to our left and she looks off in that direction. The wall behind the table is mottled with smoky shades of gray and tan.
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A pale-skinned man sits facing our left as he plays a harp while turning his face to smile at us in this vertical portrait painting. He looks out the corners of his light blue eyes under arched, gray brows. He has a rounded nose, pale pink lips, and a round face. Gray hair is brushed back from his high forehead and curls around his ears. His long fingers rest on the strings of the harp, and the ends of strings curl like wind-loosened strands of hair along the top edge. The man wears a pale mauve-purple cravat, and his snow-white, long-sleeved chemise is untucked and loose around his thighs. The cuff we see is open and folded back over a bright white shirt edged with lace. His dusky rose-pink breeches are unbuttoned at the knee over white stockings. The square-seated chair on which he sits is carved with garlands and floral patterns, which are gilded gold. The seat itself is topaz blue, and it has a low back. A similarly ornamented and gilded table along the back of the room holds a portfolio and roll of papers, the tooled and gilded spines of books, and a statuette to the right. The pale pinkish-orange statuette shows a woman holding a tablet and wearing a long, loose robe and head covering. Her body angles to our left and she looks off in that direction. The wall behind the table is mottled with smoky shades of gray and tan.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Ange Laurent de La Live de Jully

Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Date
probably 1759
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 117 x 88.5 cm (46 1/16 x 34 13/16 in.) framed: 161.9 x 121.9 cm (63 3/4 x 48 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1946.7.8
Credit line
Samuel H. Kress Collection
Time span
1751 to 1775
Department
CF
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • French
  • French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Century
  • male
  • portrait
  • Rococo
  • La Live de Jully, Ange Laurent de
Provenance

The sitter, Ange Laurent de La Live de Jully [1725-1779], Paris, probably 1759;[1] probably by inheritance to his second daughter, Louise de La Live, comtesse de Fezensac [d. 1829 or 1832]; by inheritance to her son, Raymond Aimery de Montesquiou, duc de Montesquiou-Fezensac [1784-1867]; by inheritance to his daughter, Oriane Henriette de Montesquiou, vicomtesse [Charles] de Goyon [d. 1887], by 1874 until at least 1885; Alexandre Léon Joseph, comte de Laborde [b. 1853, a descendant of the sitter's brother-in-law], Paris, by 1927; purchased January 1937 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[2] sold 1942 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1946 to NGA. [1] The painting is undocumented between the catalogue of La Live de Jully's collection published in 1764 (_Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture françoise de M. De Lalive_, p. 55), and its exhibition in Paris in 1874, when it was in the collection of the vicomtesse Charles de Goyon, a direct descendant of the sitter. The vicomtesse also lent the painting to an exhibition in Paris in 1885. Munhall (in Edgar Munhall, _Jean-Baptiste Greuze 1725-1805_, exh. cat., The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon; Hartford and Lille, 1976: 64) follows the Duveen provenance that accompanied the painting on its acquisition by the Kress Foundation in 1942. Eisler (Colin Eisler, _Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian_, Oxford, 1977: 327, no. 29) comments that there is no "documentary foundation for most of the sequence" between 1764 and 1874 and follows the provenance in L. Clément de Ris, _Les Amatuers de Autrefois_, Paris, 1877: 401-402. The Clément de Ris-Eisler provenance, in spite of some innaccuracies, remains tenable, especially in its credible presumption that the painting remained with La Live de Jully's heirs. Martha Hepworth of the Getty Provenance Index kindly helped clarify this issue and corrected the Clément de Ris-Eisler provenance (letter of 11 July 1989 in NGA curatorial files). [2] The painting was lent by Laborde to exhibitions in 1927 and 1935. Duveen Brothers' Paris office cabled on 30 December 1936, asking the New York office if they were interested in "Master's finest man portrait." The purchase followed quickly, as indicated by a further cable of 9 January 1937, requesting cash to pay for the painting and by an entry in the dealer's General Stock Books that reads: "GREUZE - Mons Ange Laurent de la Live de Jully Playing the Harp. Purchased from Mr. Laporte [_sic_] January 1937." (Duveen Brothers Records, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, accession no. 960015, reel 66, box 186, and reel 103, box 248, folder 13; copies in NGA curatorial files). [3] See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/247.

NGA object ID 32686. 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.