Minneapolis Institute of Art

Portrait of a Man in a Blue Coat

Anna Rajecka Gault de Saint Germain

Date

c. 1795

Medium

Pastel on paper

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Polish artist Anna Rajecka Gault de Saint Germain trained with her father, a portraitist, in her hometown of Warsaw before moving to Paris as a pensionnaire for King Stanislaw II August. She remained in France the rest of her life, marrying a French artist, and working as a painter and pastellist. She exhibited a number of works at the 1791 Salon before fleeing the escalating violence of Revolutionary Paris in 1792 and settling with her husband in the quieter town of Clermont-Ferrand. The identity of the young man in this pastel portrait is unknown, but his dress and hair are suggestive of his politics and pinpoint the date of the work to around 1795. His dandyish haircut—powdered natural hair, bangs falling on the forehead, and long braid—and his gold hoop earring are distinctive of the style of the “gilded youth, ” the wealthy middle and upper class men who opposed the Jacobins and Robespierre. A further hint of his politics is visible beneath his white pleated neckcloth and blue waistcoat, in his white vest subtly embroidered with red and blue, which may allude to the new tricolor flag adopted by France in 1794 after the ousting of Robespierre which ended the Reign of Terror. Europe

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