A powerful portrait by Francis Brooks Chadwick, who was among the most innovative figures of the American painting at the end of the 19th century… in France. He was indeed one of the first American painters discovering and assimilating the aesthetics of the impressionist movement in France. From Boston where he studied at Harvard, Chadwick pursued his studies in 1870-81 at the Academy Julian in Paris, where he had the opportunity to be taught painting by professors like Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefèbvre. In the same time, he got acquainted with John Singer Sargent, and their friendship led to journeys of discoveries and learning. But the most important journey for Chadwick was undoubtedly the travel which led him with Sargent to a small village located at about twenty kilometres from Barbizon: Grez-sur-Loing, an important artists’ colony, where he spent almost all his professional career and was the most established figure.
Although the landscape painting of Grez set a large part of Chadwick’s artistic production, the portrait nevertheless remained a genre that he used to appreciate quite intensely. The present sheet might be the portrait of a man living at Grez-sur-Loing, of a man tired, with melancholic eyes, with lines going deeply around the eyes, with uncombed hair, and half of the face hidden in the shadow.
