Portrait d'Horace Delaroche

Delaroche's portrait of his son Horace from 1838 is an intimate family document combining the professional portrait painter's technical mastery with the personal emotional investment of a father documenting his child. Horace Delaroche was the son the painter had with the daughter of Horace Vernet, who had died in 1845 at a young age, and this portrait belongs to the period of relative happiness before that loss. The portrait demonstrates Delaroche's ability to apply his characteristic psychological observation to the observation of childhood—the specific qualities of a particular child's face and expression captured with the directness of someone whose professional training made him an exceptionally acute observer of individual human beings. Private family portraits like this provide an important complement to his public historical subjects.

The filial portrait is rendered with particular warmth and intimacy, Delaroche's precise technique applied to his own child's features with evident affection.