A portrait of a child by Jeanne-Philiberte Ledoux

Description of the work

Jeanne-Philiberte Ledoux (1767–1840), portrait of a child. Oil on canvas, 44 x 36 cm. Château d’Aulteribe (Sermentizon)
© Philippe Berthé / Centre des Monuments Nationaux

Portraits of young girls and boys were hugely popular in France during^{the 18th} century, and became one of the specialities of Jean-Baptiste Greuze and, following in his footsteps, his pupil Jeanne-Philiberte Ledoux, daughter of the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. These young children are depicted simply and for their own sake, without any particular narrative context and, above all, without their parents; they are usually shown from the waist up and in almost life-size. This provided the painter with an opportunity to study emotions in all their subtleties, often in a vague, abstract manner, far removed from the ‘expressive heads’ of the^17th century, thereby establishing the formal vocabulary intended to codify the expression of emotions. The eyes are particularly tasked with conveying the dreamy or questioning mood of the young child discovering the world.

Some studies have suggested that this vogue for child portraits flourished following the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s*Emile*, but in reality the child portrait had undergone considerable change since the late^17th century. In England in particular, Anton van Dyck was already breaking the stereotypes of how children were depicted by imbuing them – whether or not they belonged to the royal family or the aristocracy – with genuine naturalness and childlike nonchalance. As for Jean-Siméon Chardin, his numerous portraits of children at play – whether playing cards or blowing soap bubbles – clearly demonstrate the popularity of this type of portrait long before Rousseau. It is worth noting, however, that reflections on pedagogy, by thinkers such as Condorcet and Rousseau—who developed the idea of allowing children to progress at their own pace and in accordance with their nature—created a favourable climate for the reception of this type of work, somewhere between strange poetry and melancholy, exploring the mystery of childhood and the development of the child’s psyche.

In the case of Jeanne-Philiberte Ledoux, a recurring type of child stands out clearly, deeply influenced by a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (Paris, Musée Cognacq-Jay): the nose is ‘Greek’, the cheeks are flushed, the full lips are slightly parted, lending the child a sort of androgyny, and the curls of the hair, somewhere between chestnut and auburn, undulate. The costume is also identical: the white shirt with a ruffled collar stands out clearly against a dark green suit.

She exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon of 1793, and then regularly until 1819. Jeanne-Philiberte Ledoux was very much in vogue in Parisian artistic circles, and also produced pastels as well as numerous miniatures. The famous miniaturist Peter Adolph Hall painted her portrait in 1791 (Wallace Collection, London), as did the painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (Bonhams auction, London 2020), of whom she was a pupil.