Getty Museum
Self-Portrait Wearing a Cloth Hat
Creator
Jonathan Richardson the ElderBritish Author · 1667–1745
All works by this person →Jonathan Richardson the Elder considered himself as much a writer as a painter and grew rich doing both. He wrote *An Essay on the Theory of Painting* in 1715, the first significant work of artistic theory in English, and elaborated further in his 1719 *Essay on the Whole Art of Criticism as it Relates to Painting and an Argument in Behalf of the Science of the Connoisseur.* After apprenticing wit
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1730–1735
- Medium
- Black chalk heightened with white chalk, on blue paper
- Culture
- British
- Department
- Drawings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
In this honest and direct self-portrait apparently made for its own sake, Jonathan Richardson the Elder used the blue paper that artists in Venice so often preferred. Drawing late in his life, Richardson focused on his face, with its firm mouth, dimpled chin, and pouchy eyes, rather than his clothing. The blue served as a middle tone, with the shadows and outlines drawn in black chalk and the gleaming tip of his nose, the edges of his lips, and his scarf highlighted in white. The smudgy, roughly applied black chalk accentuates the impression of deep shadows cast by the tilt of the turban, headgear popular with artistic types in the 1700s.
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