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The Card Players

Artist: Anonymous; After Lucas van Leyden (Dutch, 1489/1494-1533)

Date: c. 1550-1599

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, United States

Still Life with Cups

Artist: Pavel Kuznetsov (Russian, 1878–1968)

Date: 1916

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: The State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

François de Jullienne (1722–1754) and Marie Elisabeth de Jullienne (Marie Elisabeth de Séré de Rieux, 1724–1795)

Artist: Charles Antoine Coypel (French, 1694–1752)

Date: 1743

Medium: Pastel, black chalk, watercolor, and traces of black chalk underdrawing on four joined sheets of handmade blue laid paper, mounted on canvas and adhered to a keyed stretcher

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY, United States

Description

This double portrait is among the most technically brilliant by Coypel, who was a member of the French Royal Academy and official painter to King Louis XV. He used dazzling and unerring control of a variety of media (primarily pastel, but also chalk and watercolor) to capture the wide range of textures, including lace and velvet. The sitters are traditionally identified as Marie Elisabeth de Séré de Rieux and her husband François de Jullienne, son of a wealthy textile merchant, collector, and patron of Antoine Watteau. The direct gaze of the sitters, related to Coypel’s interest in the theater, is a conceit he used regularly.

Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d'Haussonville 

Artist: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780−1867)

Date: 1845

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Frick Collection, New York City, NY, United States

Description

Louise, Princesse de Broglie (1818–82) and granddaughter of Madame de Staël, married at the age of eighteen. Her husband was a diplomat, writer, and member of the French Academy, and she herself published a number of books, including biographies of Robert Emmet and Byron. For her time and her elevated social caste, she was outspokenly independent and liberal. This portrait, begun in 1842, was the fruit of several false starts and a great many preparatory drawings, including full-scale studies of the raised left arm, the head, and its reflection. According to a letter written by the artist, the finished work “aroused a storm of approval among her family and friends.” Ingres appears to have surprised the young lady in the intimacy of her boudoir, where she leans against an upholstered fireplace, having just discarded her evening wrap and opera glasses.