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ANNE-LOUIS GIRODET de ROUCY-TRIOSON
Montargis 1767 – 1824 Paris
Portrait of Jacques Maximilien Benjamin Bins, comte de Saint-Victor
Oil on canvas, unlined
92 x 73 cm (36.2 x 28.7 in)
Signed with monogram and dated at lower left
on the spine of the book: ALGDRT/ 1813
PROVENANCE: B efore a plain grey-brown background, the
Eudoxie Gavarret, daughter of the sitter; and renowned journalist and homme d’lettres,
thence by descent. Jacques de Saint-Victor (1772-1858) is
depicted seated at a desk draped in red vel-
EXHIBITED: vet, upon which sit a pen and inkwell beside a leather
Paris, Salon of 1814, no. 443. bound volume of Homer atop a scattering of papers.
Leaning slightly to the left, with his right forearm
LITERATURE: upon the book, his left hand rests lightly upon his
P. A. Coupin, Œuvres posthumes de Girodet-Trioson, wrist. He is dressed in a plain coat of fine black wool
Paris, 1829, vol. I, p. lxj (where dated 1812). over a white linen shirt with a high stock. His sparse
M. de Vasselot, Histoire du Portrait en France, Paris, brown hair is worn brushed forward over a clean
1880, p. 220. shaven face turned in three-quarter profile. Girodet
S. Lemeux-Fraitot, Ut Poeta pictor, les champs cul- captures Saint-Victor in a pose, which, while casual,
turels et littéraires d’Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson is dignified, even alert, and balances the effect of the
(1767-1824), Université de Paris, Panthéon- hands languidly crossed over the book with the clear
Sorbonne, 2003, vol. I, p. 375. gaze of his subject’s grey eyes focused steadily to the
S. Guégan, ‘Ni rouge ni blanc: Girodet et le nou- left and beyond the confines of the canvas.
vel ordre des choses’, in Girodet 1767-1824,
exhib. cat., Paris, 2005, p. 119, under note 93. Stylistically, the present portrait adheres to the tra-
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