Joseph Bonnier de la Mosson
Jean-Marc Nattier·1745
Historical Context
Jean-Marc Nattier was the pre-eminent portraitist of the French court in the mid-eighteenth century, and his 1745 portrait of Joseph Bonnier de la Mosson — or a member of the wealthy Bonnier family connected to royal finances — demonstrates his characteristic blend of Rococo elegance and official gravitas. Nattier's genius lay in translating masculine status into visual language that was simultaneously dignified and animated by Rococo rhythm, rather than the stiffer conventions inherited from Le Brun. By the 1740s, Nattier had developed a polished formula that satisfied both bourgeois ambition and aristocratic taste, and his sitters included figures from the highest reaches of court society. This portrait reveals Nattier navigating the expectations of a prosperous financier class that was reshaping French social hierarchies in the years before the Revolution.
Technical Analysis
Nattier applies paint with fluid elegance, his surfaces smooth and luminous. The palette is restrained and warm, with the sitter's costume providing controlled tonal contrast against a classical architectural background. The composition follows Nattier's characteristic three-quarter pose, the face turned with an expression of composed authority.
Provenance
Duc de Mailly; Théodore Richard [1782-1859], Paris; (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 19-20 and 22 March 1858, no. 176, with sitter misidentified as _Portrait of Bouffon_). (sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 27 March 1877, no. 42, with sitter misidentified as _Portrait of Bouffon_); Gustave Rothan; (his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 29-31 May 1890, no. 176, as _Portrait of a Man_); L. Cahen d'Anvers,[1] Paris, by 1900; A. de Rothschild, by 1906; (Thos. Agnew and Sons, Ltd., London), by 4 May 1936; comte X...; (his sale, Galerie Jean Charpentier, Paris, 18 March 1937, lot A); purchased by Damidot.[2] (Galerie Cailleux, Paris), by 1952;[3] purchased 9 February 1954 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] In all probability, the French banker comte Louis-Raphaël Cahen d'Anvers (1837-1922); see Colin Bailey's entry for Renoir's _Portrait of Alice and Élisabeth Cahen d'Anvers_ (Museu de Arte de Sao Paolo Assis Chateaubriand), in Colin Bailey, _Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age_, exh. cat.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Art Institute of Chicago; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; New Haven, 1997: 180-182, no. 38, and notes on 306-307. [2] This was reported in the _Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot_, 20 March 1937: 1. [3] The painting was lent by Cailleux to the 1952 exhibition at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris. [4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1171.
