Bildnis eines unbekannten Herrn

Male portraiture by Nattier is rarer and consequently more prized by scholars seeking to understand the full range of his practice. This 1753 portrait of an unknown gentleman, now in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, was painted at a moment when Nattier's female allegorical portraits had become his dominant production but he continued to accept male commissions. The title Bildnis eines unbekannten Herrn—German for Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman—indicates that any original documentation identifying the sitter was lost before the work entered the Karlsruhe collection. The Kunsthalle, founded in 1846, holds a broad collection of European painting and has traditionally emphasised French and German work from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. A 1753 Nattier male portrait offers evidence of how the artist handled the different demands of male portraiture—less room for mythological allegory, more attention to the sober magnificence of court or military dress, and a greater emphasis on conveying character through the face alone.

Male dress in the 1750s—heavy embroidered coat, powdered wig, lace jabot—provided rich textural material for Nattier's brush. The contrast between the intricate surface ornament of the coat and the smooth, blended handling of the face is characteristic of his male portraits.