Portrait de Jacques (1884)

Overview

The Portrait de Jacques is a portrait in oil of a small boy called Jacques who sat to Marie in Paris from January to June 1884. It is not the same as the double picture Jean et Jacques (1883). The diary shows Marie unhappy with it throughout: it was one of the works she lent to the Union des femmes peintres exhibition in March 1884, and in June she calls it, with the Sèvres picture, one of her "deux cauchemars". Where it is now is not known; a Portrait de Jacques Rendouin, 0.85 x 0.54 m, is no. 42 of the 1885 memorial catalogue and may be the same picture, though the diary never gives a surname.

Marie and this work

27 January 1884 (103.0150): "Jacques pose et je n'en sors pas, il ne pose pas. Ah ! misère." (103.0154): "Il est mauvais ce portrait de Jacques... Je fais trop de fonds dessus, voilà pourquoi." On 31 January (103.0187): "Fini Jacques ! Et comme son frère est venu le chercher, un bébé de trois ans, j'en fait une ébauche." So the sitter has a baby brother of three.

On 1 March (103.0437) Mme Bertaux, the president of the women painters' union, has come to ask for pictures, and Marie has given "le paysage (une allée de l'île de la Grande Jatte ...) ... Les portraits de Dina au pastel et de Jacques à l'huile". Her verdict, a few paragraphs later (103.0445): "autant le portrait de Jacques me déplaît, autant mes autres envois devraient être placés avec de grands honneurs".

Yet she goes back to it: 3 April (103.0697) "Je reprends Jacques et il ne pose pas du tout"; 29 May (104.0434), irritated, "Jacques en ne posant pas"; 19 June (104.0605-0606) "Jacques pose. Il me semble que ce ne sera jamais fini." and "Le tableau de Sèvres et le portrait de Jacques, deux cauchemars !!" The sequence leaves open whether the portrait she "took up again" from April was the same canvas as the one sent in March, or a second portrait of the same boy. The project does not decide.

References in Diary

Related Entries

Sources