Autoportrait

This 1729 self-portrait, now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, is among the most important surviving autoportraits in Largillière's oeuvre: painted when he was in his mid-seventies and still active, it demonstrates both his sustained technical ability and his self-awareness as a historical figure in French art. Self-portraiture by senior Academicians was a well-established practice in French art, combining professional self-promotion with the kind of reflective personal statement that distinguished self-portraits from commissioned work. Largillière had been elected rector of the Académie royale and was one of its most prominent members; a self-portrait at this age was simultaneously a statement of personal achievement and a contribution to the Academy's collection of artists' portraits. Orléans's collection preserves this work as an important document of French academic culture.

Self-portraiture allowed Largillière to set his own conditions: the lighting, the expression, the attributes. At seventy-five, his face would have demanded honest engagement with the marks of age—lines, softened contours—while maintaining the dignity appropriate to a senior Academician. His handling of his own features, studied in the mirror, is typically more psychologically searching than his commissioned portraits.