Portrait du Comte Henri Delaborde

Henri Delaborde (1811-1899) was a distinguished French art historian, engraver, and Permanent Secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, one of the most authoritative voices on French art during the second half of the nineteenth century. Bonnat painted this portrait on panel in 1886, when Delaborde was in his mid-seventies and at the end of a long career of institutional leadership and scholarly production. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon holds this work. The fact that Delaborde served as the Académie's Permanent Secretary gives the portrait a particular institutional significance: this is the official art world's own historian and guardian as seen by its leading portraitist, a double portrait of the French academic tradition by itself. Bonnat and Delaborde would have known each other well through the interlocking institutions of the Académie, the École des Beaux-Arts, and the Salon.

Working on panel, Bonnat achieves a finer surface than canvas allows, and the portrait of the elderly art historian benefits from the precision this support permits. The characterisation of Delaborde's aged face is among Bonnat's more searching — the elderly academician's intelligence and authority are registered with notable psychological complexity.