Jean-Baptiste Isabey and His Daughter
François Gérard (1770-1837) · 1795
A young man in a dark coat, grey breeches and top boots stands on a stone floor beside a doorway, his hat in one hand, holding with the other the hand of a small girl in a white dress and cap. Through the door a dog barks in the sunlight. The man is Jean-Baptiste Isabey, the most celebrated miniature painter of his day, and the child is his daughter Alexandrine, born in 1791. Their easy, walking pose and the plain, dark clothing make the picture feel like a snapshot of Parisian life under the Directory.
François Gérard signed and dated it in 1795, when he was twenty-five and Isabey twenty-eight, and the two were close friends. He exhibited it at the Salon of the Year Five, in 1796, and then gave it to Isabey to thank him for helping to sell his Belisarius, a picture now lost. Alexandrine later married the stage designer Cicéri. The painting descended to Isabey's son, the painter Eugène Isabey, who gave it to the Louvre in 1852 together with David's self-portrait, in this room. During the Second World War it was evacuated to the château de Montal and returned in March 1946.
Did You Know? Gérard gave the picture to Isabey as a thank-you for helping him sell another painting.
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