Jean-Baptiste Isabey
Nancy, 1767 - 1855, Paris
b Nancy, 11 April 1767; d Paris, 18 April 1855).
Painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He trained in Nancy with Jean Girardet (d 1778) and then with Jean-Baptiste-Charles Claudot (1733–1805), master of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Augustin. In 1785 he went to Paris, where he began by painting snuff-boxes. In 1786 he received lessons from the painter François Dumont, who had also studied with Girardet in Nancy, before entering the studio of David. Although he had received aristocratic commissions before the Revolution to paint portrait miniatures of the Duc d’Angoulême and Duc de Berry and through them of Marie-Antoinette, he did not suffer in the political upheavals that followed. He executed 228 portraits of deputies for a work on the Assemblée Législative and from 1793 exhibited miniatures and drawings in the Salon. Success came to him in 1794 with two drawings in the ‘manière noire’, The Departure and The Return. This type of drawing, using pencil and the stump to simulate engraving, was very fashionable in the last years of the 18th century and reached its peak with Isabey’s The Boat (exh. Salon 1798; Paris, Louvre), an informal scene including a self-portrait, in which the artist exploited contrasts of light and shade with considerable success.
Isabey took an active part in Parisian artistic and social life and was much sought after by Mme de Staël and Mme Récamier for their salons. He commissioned a portrait of himself and his daughter from François Gérard (for additional information and illustration see Gérard, françois), and Boilly immortalized Isabey’s own brilliant gatherings in the Studio of Isabey (1798; Paris, Louvre). At the school of Mme Campan at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Isabey taught drawing to Hortense de Beauharnais and through her was introduced to the Napoleonic court, where he rapidly established himself. He was one of the first chevaliers of the Légion d’honneur and in 1804 was appointed Dessinateur du Cabinet de l’Empereur, des Cérémonies et des Relations Extérieures. He also organized all the private and public festivities in the Tuileries, at Saint-Cloud and Malmaison. In his capacity as Dessinateur du Cabinet de l’Empereur he produced a watercolour (Paris, Bib. N.) for the frontispiece of a volume of Ossian’s poems in Napoleon’s library. In 1805 he was made Premier Peintre to the Empress, Josephine, and painted numerous portraits of her, notably the Empress after the Divorce (Paris, Louvre) and Empress Josephine (after 1803; Angers, Mus. Turpin de Crissé). He was on equally good terms with Napoleon’s second wife, Marie-Louise, whom he painted in her wedding dress (large miniature, 1810; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) and with her son, François-Charles-Joseph, King of Rome (e.g. London, Wallace, 1815; Malmaison, Château N.). His portraits of Napoleon are equally numerous, including Bonaparte at Malmaison (exh. Salon 1802; Malmaison, Château N.) and the Review for Quintidi (exh. Salon 1804; Paris, Louvre). His miniatures of the Emperor and Empress became so famous that they were used to adorn many snuff-boxes.
In 1807 Napoleon appointed Isabey to succeed I.-E.-M. Degotti (d 1824) as principal decorator of the imperial theatres. Isabey also worked for the Sèvres factory, contributing to the decoration of the Table des maréchaux (1806; Malmaison, Château N.). During a stay in Vienna he executed 16 portrait miniatures of members of the Austrian imperial family (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), which he exhibited in the Salon of 1812. He returned to Vienna in 1814 to paint the plenipotentiaries of the Congress of Vienna. Isabey’s work did not develop or change, and his popularity began to decline under the Restoration. He was almost forgotten during the July Monarchy, deriving a small pension from a post as assistant curator to the Musées Royaux in 1837. In 1853 Napoleon III remembered that Isabey had been highly regarded by his mother and made him a commander of the Légion d’honneur.
Isabey’s fame derived from his portrait miniatures, and within this genre he was considered the leader of a school. In watercolour he created a type of portrait that became extremely fashionable: a woman’s face wearing a melancholy, stereotyped smile, framed by roses and wreathed in diaphanous veils fluttering in an imaginary breeze. These portraits, with their fresh, bright colouring, were highly prized by his aristocratic and middle-class clientele. During the Empire and the Restoration, Isabey endlessly repeated this formula, the gracefulness of which sometimes declined into mawkish vapidity. He also produced large drawings such as the First Consul at the Factory of the Sévène Brothers in Rouen and Bonaparte at the Oberkampf Factory (exh. Salon 1804; Versailles, Château), in which he treated historic events as elegant genre scenes. In the Staircase of the Louvre (Paris, Louvre), a large watercolour painted on ivory, he emulated porcelain in the quality of the detail and the sweet, refined colouring. Isabey also made a small number of portraits in oils, including Napoleon I (Nancy, Mus. B.-A.) and the Comtesse de Boigne (Chambéry, Mus. B.-A.).
Isabey’s graphic oeuvre is also significant. He was fascinated by drawing in the ‘manière noire’ when the fashion for this style had only just begun and was one of the first painters to use lithography. In 1818 he published with Godefroy Engelmann a series of small-scale examples of lithography in which he experimented with new ways of rendering effects of light. He also published Voyage en Italie (a set of 30 lithographs) and, in a more risqué manner, a collection of 12 Caricatures de J. J. (1818). He contributed to Baron Taylor’s Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, making felicitous use of monochrome printing.
Bibliography
P. Mantz: ‘Jean-Baptiste Isabey’, L’Artiste (6 May 1855), pp. 1–5
E. Taigny: J.-B. Isabey: Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1859)
C. Lenormant: ‘Jean-Baptiste Isabey’, L’Artiste (1 March 1861), pp. 97–100
H. Béraldi: Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, viii (Paris, 1889), pp. 151–6
G. Hédiard: Les Maîtres de la lithographie: J.-B. Isabey (Châteaudun, 1896)
Mme de Basily-Callimaki: J.-B. Isabey, sa vie, son temps, 1767–1855: Suivi du catalogue de l’oeuvre gravée par et d’après Isabey (Paris, 1909)
A. Francastel: ‘Quelques miniatures d’Isabey’, Rev. Etud. Napoléoniennes, ii (1918), pp. 120–28
M. Garçot: ‘Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1767–1855’, Pays Lorrain, iv (1956), pp. 152–60
Marie-Claude Chaudonneret
Grover Art online, accessed 3/4/2015
Person TypeIndividual
Last Updated8/7/24
