Portrait of Monsieur Rouland

Painted in 1875 and held at the Art Institute of Chicago, this portrait of Monsieur Rouland by Adolphe Monticelli shows the Marseille painter in a more conventional mode than his characteristic impastoed fantasy pictures. Monticelli occasionally produced formal portraits of specific individuals alongside his imaginary fête galante and still-life subjects, and these portraits reveal an artist capable of individual characterization as well as chromatic fantasy. The identity of Rouland is not definitively established, but the sitter is treated with the thick, warm application characteristic of Monticelli's technique.

Monticelli builds the portrait head in his characteristic impasted technique, the face modeled through thick strokes of warm flesh tone layered over darker grounds. The technique gives the portrait an unusual physical presence—the paint itself has sculptural relief—that distinguishes Monticelli's portraits from the smooth academic surfaces his contemporaries preferred.