Portrait de François-René de Chateaubriand

François-René de Chateaubriand, the great Romantic writer whose Atala and René had transformed French literature, sits for this 1809 portrait at the Vallée-aux-Loups, Chateaubriand's country house. The connection between artist and writer was particularly close—Girodet's famous painting The Burial of Atala (1808) had been directly inspired by Chateaubriand's novel. This portrait thus documents a creative relationship between two of the defining figures of French Romanticism.

Girodet captures the writer with the psychological intensity appropriate to one of the great literary personalities of the age. Chateaubriand's romantic, somewhat brooding expression is rendered with careful attention to the interplay of light and shadow across the face. The handling combines Neoclassical precision with the atmospheric qualities Girodet brought to his most personal works.