Large Antique French Mustached Gentleman Oil Portrait

He turns his head and looks off to the side, and you get the whole man in that one movement: the waxed and curled mustache, the high white collar, the dark coat dissolving into a darker ground. The painter gave almost nothing to the background and the clothes, keeping them deep and shadowed, so that everything lands on the face. It's a portrait built on restraint. One lit face, one immaculate mustache, and a great deal of dark around them.

This is a portrait of a dandy, and it reads as one. The care is all in the grooming and the bearing, the sense of a man who has thought about how he wishes to be seen. It's painted around 1900, at the close of the era when a gentleman's self-presentation was itself a kind of art, and the painter clearly relished the assignment.

Why We Love It
Some portraits fill a wall by being loud. This one does it by being still. He doesn't perform for you. He holds his pose, half-turned, and lets you come to him. That composure is the whole appeal, the feeling of standing before someone who knows exactly who he is and is in no hurry to prove it to you. He dressed with intention, and the painter caught it exactly. You don't look at this portrait so much as get looked past by it.

At more than three feet tall, he has real scale, and on the wall he stops being a picture and starts to preside over the room. A guest notices him on the way in and keeps glancing back, half wanting his approval.

Key Features:

• Origin: France
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Period: circa 1900
• Signature: Signed by the artist
• Dimensions: 40.6" x 27.25"
• Condition: Great antique condition for its age, with fine craquelure across the surface and two tiny spots of paint loss near the ear. The face and sitter remain strong and well preserved. Presented in a later giltwood frame. Please see photos for details.
• This piece will be shipped from Los Angeles