Portraits of Friends
A number of Carolus Duran's most delightful portraits are those he painted of his friends. We have already touched on one of his youthful works, Portrait of Fantin-Latour and Oulevay, but he continued to produce this type of picture right through his career. Among the most remarkable are the Portrait of Zacharie Astruc, another youthful work; Man with a Cigar, an informal portrait which combines candour and intensity and the Portrait of Nadar, which gives expression to all the sympathy and affection that linked the painter and photographer, both portraitists.
Once again, we must mention the Portrait of Edouard Manet, which shows a privileged moment in the relationship between the two artists, like that which Manet painted of Carolus during the same period. Finally, let us touch on the Trio of Friends, which falls within the 17th Century Scandinavian tradition of the collective portrait. In it Carolus-Duran focuses on two figures: those of Hector Lemaire, his successor in Rome as the Wicar Foundation resident, and his long-time friend, Zacharie Astruc. The third person is a painter by the name of Antoine-Gabriel Favard. As so often, Carolus uses a restrained chromatic range which emphasizes the strongly-lit faces.
Far removed from the exercise in virtuosity required for a society portrait, these works reveal a very sensitive artist, capable of reproducing in several rapid brush strokes the depths of an individual's personality and the feelings linking them. Equally, these portraits help to better define the contrasting environments in which Carolus-Duran developed: connected from his youth to the Impressionist painters and their champions - his technique sometimes approaches theirs in his portrait of Manet - he was also close to Nadar and moved in fashionable artistic circles in Paris at the end of the Second Empire and during the Third Republic.
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