French school: 'Portrait of Jourdain', inscr. 'Jourdain ... 1810', gouache on paper

Work: 50 x 39 cm

Frame: 58,5 x 47,5 cm

Possibly a self-portrait by Laurent-Bruno-François Jourdain (Besançon 6.X .1745–18.IV.1815').

Son of the painter François Jourdain, a protégé of Mgr de Durfort, Laurent-Bruno-François was also a pupil of Wyrsch. It was not until 1776, at the age of 31, that he succeeded in obtaining first prize at the école de Besançon. In 1785, when Wyrsch wanted to leave, Jourdain submitted an Adam et Eve trouvant mort leur fils Abel, but this was not considered adequate to justify his appointment to succeed his master, and the place was given to Lenoir. Jourdain exhibited several pastels at the open salon of 1802, from rue neuve des Bons- Enfants, no. 26. Although he continued to teach drawing at Besançon after the closure of the École centrale in 1803, the drawing school had declined after the departure of Wyrsch and the short-lived tenure of Lenoir, and could not withstand the imposition of fees which his pupils, mainly drawn from the working classes, had been unable to afford. Jourdain appealed to the municipality in an impassioned letter of 11.VI .1803, and four years later was permitted to open an École gratuite de dessin to which he and the much younger dijonnais, Dominique Paillot, were appointed professeurs. Jourdain’s classes were attended on average by some 200 pupils. He made allegorical and religious paintings (such as the Martyre de saint Vernier in the Sainte-Madeleine at Besançon), miniatures, oil portraits, as well as some pastels. These show strong colouring; the faces have a provincial and somewhat Teutonic directness, with distinctive eyebrows and blueish shadows. (Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, 2008)