Perronneau, trained as a painter, pastelist, and engraver, entered the Académie Royale in 1753. By that time he was already admired as a colorist and had exhibited widely; however, he seems to have discovered that he could not compete with Maurice Quentin de La Tour for aristocratic or royal clients and for the most part sought work outside the capital. In 1756 Perronneau visited Bordeaux to paint members of the Journu family of shipping magnates whose wealth derived from the sugar and slave trades. The first of these portraits represented Bernard, called Olivier, who was born about 1716. Journu appears to be acutely aware of the dashing impression he makes, which appealed greatly to key nineteenth-century aesthetes, including Robert de Montesquiou and the brothers Goncourt.
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Title:Olivier Journu (1724–1783)
Artist:Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (French, Paris 1715–1783 Amsterdam)
Date:1756
Medium:Pastel on blue-gray laid paper, laid down on canvas
Dimensions:22 7/8 x 18 1/2 in. (58.1 x 47 cm)
Classification:Pastels & Oil Sketches on Paper
Credit Line:Wrightsman Fund, 2003
Object Number:2003.26
Perronneau, a Parisian of bourgeois birth, was in his maturity exclusively a portraitist. A pupil of the engraver Laurent Cars (1699–1771), he may also have studied with Hubert Drouais (1699–1767) or Charles Joseph Natoire (1700–1777). He was admitted a candidate of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1746 and received in 1753. By this time Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788) had captured the market for pastel portraits among the aristocracy in Paris and at the court of Versailles. Although Perronneau had many Salon exhibits to his credit and was admired as a colorist, thereafter he generally found his clients among the upper middle classes and outside the capital, becoming an itinerant. In addition to Paris he worked in Orléans, Toulouse, and Bordeaux. He may also have been in Italy, visited Amsterdam more than once, and reportedly traveled to St. Petersburg. It was perhaps a matter of expediency rather than of his clients' taste that Perronneau preferred frontal or three-quarter view pastel portraits of less than half-length format. He achieved his expressive characterizations with effort; his pastels may show evidence of reworking. His work is remarkable for the subtle variety of coloring in both the lights and the shadows.
In 1756 Perronneau visited Bordeaux to paint a member of the Journu family, whose wealth, like that of many elite families in the port city, derived from the sugar and slave trades. It is estimated that in the period between 1672 and 1837 Bordeaux’s merchants were responsible for the movement of some 150,000 enslaved people. Madame Claude Journu was the widowed mother of eighteen children, one of whom, Bernard, called Olivier, born about 1716, is represented here. Its success engendered additional commissions, including the 1767 portrait of Bonaventure and those of his brother, Jacques, Abbé Journu-Dumoncey, and of their mother, the latter dating to 1769 (all are oil paintings belonging now to the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.). Olivier Journu has brilliant turquoise blue eyes and the square jaw and very dark brows typical of his family. He wears point d'Alençon lace and a corsage of roses. While his expression is opaque, he seems to be acutely self-aware. In the nineteenth century his dashing appearance appealed to the brothers Goncourt and to Robert de Montesquiou who allegedly exclaimed "Oh, ce jeune home …. On l’embrasserait!"
Katharine Baetjer 2010; updated 2021
Inscription: Signed and dated in graphite (upper right): Perronneau / 1756
the sitter's brother, Bonaventure Journu, Bordeaux (until d. 1781); his son, Bernard Journu-Auber, later comte de Tustal, château de Tustal, Sadirac (1781–d. 1815); his daughter, Mme Jean-Baptiste Jacques Le Grix de La Salle (from 1815); her granddaughter, Louise Le Grix, comtesse de Tustal, château du Petit-Verdus, Sadirac (sold to Groult); Camille Groult, Paris (by 1896–d. 1908); Mme Camille Groult, Paris (from 1908); by descent to Bordeaux Groult, Paris (until 2002; sale, Sotheby's, Paris, June 27, 2002, no. 39, for € 258,750 to Artemis); [Artemis, Munich and New York, 2002–3; sold to The Met]
Paris. Galerie Georges Petit. "Cent pastels du XVIIIe siècle," May 18–June 10, 1908, no. 100 (as "Portrait d'homme à la rose," lent by Mme X...).
Bordeaux. Musée d'art ancien. "Exposition d'iconographie Bordelaisie," May 13–June 30, 1928 [reproduction only; see Meaudre de Lapouyade 1947].
New York. C. G. Boerner. "Old Master Drawings," January 22–February 8, 2003, no. 31 [this picture exhibited January 22–28].
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe," May 17–August 14, 2011, no. 21.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Eighteenth-Century Pastels," August 6–December 29, 2013, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Eighteenth-Century Pastel Portraits," July 26–October 29, 2017, no catalogue.
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT, BY TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.
Maurice Tourneux. "Jean-Baptiste Perronneau (2e article)." Gazette des beaux-arts, 3rd ser., 15 (1896), p. 135, quotes a description of this pastel, dated 1756, by Charles Marionneau, who thought it the best Perronneau in M. Groult's collection; as from the château du Petit-Verdus.
L[éon]. Roger-Milès inMaitres du XVIIIe siècle: Cent pastels. Paris, 1908, p. 87, ill. preceding p. 87, identifies the sitter as Charles-Louis-Génu Soalhat, chevalier de Mainvilliers.
Léandre Vaillat and Paul Ratouis de Limay. J.-B. Perronneau (1715–1783): Sa vie et son œuvre. Paris, [1909], pp. 32, 96, 130, 144, no. 67, pl. 43, as "Portrait de jeune homme aux trois roses".
Louis Paraf. "Sur trois pastels de Perronneau de la collection Groult." Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français (1910), p. 251, identifies the sitter as M. Tassin de la Renardière.
Robert de Montesquiou. Têtes couronnées. Paris, 1916, p. 132, describes it as the "perle, entre tous les perles du musée Groult".
Léandre Vaillat and Paul Ratouis de Limay. J.-B. Perronneau (1715–1783): Sa vie et son œuvre. 2nd ed. Paris, 1923, pp. 67, 89–90, 217–18, 222, accept the identification proposed by Paraf.
[Maurice Meaudre de Lapouyade]. "Une visite à l'exposition d'iconographie bordelaise." Revue philomathique de Bordeaux et du sud-ouest (April–June 1928), pp. 53–54, identifies the sitter as a member of the Journu family.
Y. Jubert. "Les modèles bordelais de Jean-Baptiste Perronneau." La Petite Gironde (August 2, 1941), ill. [see sale cat. Sotheby's, Paris, June 27, 2002, no. 39].
Maurice Meaudre de Lapouyade. Perronneau à Bordeaux. 1947, pp. ? [Bibliothèque Municipale de Bordeaux; published in "Le port des lumières," exh. cat., 3 vols., Bordeaux, 1989, vol. 1: "La peinture à Bordeaux, 1750–1800," pp. 77–80, no. 11, ill.], identifies the sitter as Olivier Journu.
Christine Debrie. Le pastel du XVIIIe au XXe siècle à travers les acquisitions du Musée Antoine Lécuyer, 1978–1993. Exh. cat., Musée Antoine Lécuyer. Saint-Quentin, 1993, p. 10.
Old Master Drawings. Exh. cat., C. G. Boerner. New York, 2003, unpaginated, no. 31, ill. (color).
Colnaghi. Old Master Paintings. London, 2004, pp. 52–53.
Perrin Stein inThe Wrightsman Pictures. Ed. Everett Fahy. New York, 2005, pp. 179–81, no. 51, ill. (color).
Marjorie Shelley. "Pastelists at Work: Two Portraits at the Metropolitan Museum by Maurice Quentin de La Tour and Jean Baptiste Perronneau." Metropolitan Museum Journal 40 (2005), pp. 105–19, figs. 2, 4–5, 10–11(overall, details, and infrared reflectogram), colorpls. 9–10 (overall and detail), describes the artist's technique, and, notably, the "draftsmanly quality of his crayon".
Neil Jeffares. Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800. London, 2006, p. 403, ill. (color).
Rena M. Hoisington. "Maurice-Quentin de La Tour and the Triumph of Pastel Painting in Eighteenth-Century France." PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2006, p. 206, pl. 125.
Neil Jeffares. "Jean-Baptiste Perronneau." Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800. London, 2006, no. J.582.1429 [online edition, http://www.pastellists.com/articles/perronneau.pdf, accessed 04/16/2019].
Katharine Baetjer and Marjorie Shelley. "Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 68 (Spring 2011), pp. 23, 25, 33, 39, no. 21, ill. on cover and p. 32 (color).
Neil Jeffares. "Pastel Portraits: New York." Burlington Magazine 153 (July 2011), p. 500, ill. (color).
Dominique d' Arnoult. Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, ca. 1715–1783: Un portraitiste dans l'Europe des lumières. Paris, 2014, pp. 16, 82, 92, 94, 112, 115, 140 n. 668, pp. 146, 162, 195, 197, 200 n. 1049, pp. 221, 257–58, 261, 290, 304, 319, no. 158 Pa, ill. pp. 17, 111, 114 (color, overall and details).
Thea Burns in Thea Burns Philippe Saunier. L'art du pastel. Paris, 2014, p. 88, ill. p. 86 (color, cropped).
Louis-Antoine Prat. Le Dessin Français au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 2017.
Humphrey Wine. The Eighteenth Century French Paintings. London, 2018, p. 385.
Francesca Whitlum-Cooper in Humphrey Wine. The Eighteenth Century French Paintings. London, 2018, p. 370.
Neil Jeffares. Minutiae at the Met. March 29, 2019, unpaginated [https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/minutiae-at-the-met/], states that the most accurate dates for the sitter based on present knowledge should be ca. 1716–1783.
Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 189–92, no. 55, ill. (color).
Neil Jeffares. "Two Pastels of the Journu Family by Perronneau." Pastels & Pastellists. April 30, 2019, pp. 4–5, fig. 6 (color) [http://www.pastellists.com/Essays/Perronneau_Journu.pdf].
Colin B. Bailey. "Review of Baetjer 2019." Burlington Magazine 163 (May 2021), p. 471, fig. 4 (color).
Katie Scott and Hannah Williams. Artists' Things: Rediscovering Lost Property from Eighteenth-Century France. Los Angeles, 2024, p. 265, fig. 135 (color).
Melissa Hyde. "Men in Pink: The Petit-Maître, Refined Masculinity, and Whiteness." Journal18 (Spring 2024), figs. 2, 9 (color, overall and detail) [https://www.journal18.org/7284], notes the Journu family's involvement in the sugar refining industry and traffic of enslaved Africans; connects this portrait, along with others of the Journu family by Perronneau, as a contributing factor to the family's upward mobility; argues that Journu's pink clothing "carries with it all of the possible meanings of pink: it is part of a performance of whiteness, itself involved in the pigmentary constitution of race, which is also associated with the aspirational idea of (white) refinement emblematized by the 'petit-maître' and all his ambiguities".
This work may not be lent, by terms of its acquisition by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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