Portrait du planteur

The Aquitaine Museum in Bordeaux holds this portrait identified as Portrait du planteur—'portrait of a planter'—dated 1800, a date that postdates Largillière's death in 1746 by more than five decades. This suggests either a significant dating error in the catalogue, a later copy or workshop version, or a misattribution. The Bordeaux context is significant: the city was France's primary colonial port, deeply embedded in the Atlantic plantation economy through its role in the wine and slave trades, and a portrait of a colonial planter—likely associated with Caribbean sugar or coffee production—would be historically resonant within Aquitaine's collections. The Bordeaux plantation owner portrait carries unavoidable connections to the colonial economy that made the city's eighteenth-century prosperity possible. Whether this is an autograph Largillière, a workshop piece, or a later work, its association with colonial plantation society gives it historical dimensions beyond formal portraiture.

The date discrepancy requires any technical analysis to be provisional. If autograph Largillière, the work would show his characteristic portrait techniques. A posthumous work by a follower would likely reproduce his compositional formulas—the three-quarter pose, the warm background, the formal costume—with less of his characteristic nuance in the face and fabric handling.