David Johnston
Pierre Paul Prud'hon·1808
Historical Context
Pierre Paul Prud'hon's portrait of David Johnston, painted in 1808, depicts a member of the Bordeaux wine merchant family during the Napoleonic era. Prud'hon's portraits, though less famous than his allegorical works, demonstrate his unique ability to combine Neoclassical elegance with atmospheric softness. Johnston's family was central to the Bordeaux wine trade, and this portrait captures a prosperous member of the French mercantile elite during the Empire period.
Technical Analysis
Prud'hon's oil-on-canvas technique creates his distinctive atmospheric portrait style, with the sitter emerging from a dark, softly gradated background. The face is modeled with gentle sfumato and warm, luminous flesh tones that distinguish his portraits from the colder, more linear Neoclassical manner.
Provenance
The portrait's original owner is said to have been the sitter [1789-1854], Bordeaux, France; by descent to the Johnston family, Bordeaux.[1] Edouard-Napoléon-Cesar-Edmond Mortier, duc de Trévise [1883-1946], Paris, in 1913; (his sale, Hôtel Jean Charpentier, Paris, 19 May 1938, no. 36); bought in for the family by (Robert Lebel [1901-1986], Paris);[2] (Julius H. Weitzner [1896-1986], New York); sold 1952 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] Information that the picture remained with the Johnston family until its purchase for the duc de Trévise in 1913 was first published by Charles Sterling in _Chefs-d-oeuvre de l'art français_ (Exh. cat. Palais National des Arts, Paris, 1937: 105, no. 211). This was not repeated in the catalogue of the Trévise sale in 1938. [2] An annotated copy of Trévise sale catalogue gives Lebel, one of the experts at the sale, as the buyer. Julius Weitzner wrote to Dr. Suida at the Kress Foundation that the painting was bought in by the family, and that he (Weitzner) "purchased it from the sole survivor of the Duc de Trevise" (letter, 21 March 1952, copy in NGA curatorial files) [3] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/643.
