Description
French painter (19th century) – Portrait of Alexandre Dumas (Villers-Cotterêts 1802 – Neuville-lès-Dieppe 1870).
Oil on panel, without frame.
This small portrait depicts Alexandre Dumas père, one of the most celebrated novelists and playwrights of 19th-century French literature, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. The subject is shown in half-length, three-quarter view, wearing a dark coat, white shirt, and tie, against a plain dark ground. The loose, direct brushwork, with rapid strokes in the rendering of the curly hair and facial volumes, suggests execution from life or from a well-established iconographic model. The small-format panel belongs to the tradition of the studio bust portrait, widespread in French painting of the second half of the 19th century.
Condition report: Good state of conservation of the pictorial surface.
