A Man Seated in an Interior

Artist Carle Van Loo (French, 1705 - 1765)

Date1743

MediumBlack and white chalk on gray-green paper

DimensionsUnframed: 16 1/8 x 12 1/4 inches (40.97 x 31.12 cm)
Framed: 25 1/4 x 21 1/2 x 1 1/4 inches (64.135 x 54.61 x 3.175 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number32-193/1

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

The Century of Mozart, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1956, no. 186.

French Master Drawings of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries in North American Collections, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, September 2-October 15, 1972; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Cultural Center, New York, no. 141.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 45, as A Man Seated in an Interior.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, unnumbered, as A Man in an Interior.

Gallery Label

The elegant dress and pose of the sitter show him to be a member of the French aristocracy, as does his sword, which only the nobility and gentry were allowed to wear. He looks like a "macaroni," an 18th-century term for a man of fashion, who surely did not work for a living! In the 17th and 18th centuries the kings of France encouraged the aristocracy to waste time and money vying for the king's favor at the court of Versailles. This kept them from being too independent or rebellious, and asserted royal control.

Provenance

M.B. Bourdet, Marseille;

Sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, November 10, 1922, lot 85;

With Richard Owen, Paris, by September 26–December 1, 1932 [1];

Purchased from Owen, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.

NOTES:

[1] See letter from Harold Woodbury Parsons, art advisor to NAMA, to J. C. Nichols, NAMA Trustee, September 26, 1932.

Published References

American Art News (November 9, 1933): (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 68, (repro.), as Seated Man.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 115, (repro.), as Man Seated.

Pierre Rosenberg, “Dessins français du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècle dans les collections américaines,” L’Œil 18, no. 212-13 (August-September 1972): 15, as Portrait d’homme.

Pierre Rosenberg, French Master Drawings of the 17^th and 18^th centuries in North American collections, trans. Catherine Johnson, exh. cat. (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1972), 216-17, (repro.), as Portrait of a Seated Man.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 185, (repro.), as Man Seated.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 186, (repro.). as A Man Seated in an Interior.

Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 149-51, 168, (repro.), as A Man Seated in an Interior.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 97, (repro.), as A Man Seated in an Interior.

Louis-Antoine Prat, Le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Somogy, 2017).

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