# Self-Portrait with a Visor

- By: Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779)
- Date: c. 1776
- Medium: Pastel on blue laid paper, laid down on canvas
- Classification: Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions: 45.7 × 37.4 cm (18 × 14 3/4 in.)
- Culture: France
- Credit line: Clarence Buckingham Collection and the Harold Joachim Memorial Fund
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102131)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/dfe5d0d9-5ef0-5ff7-dfa8-43a98d704493/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Over a century after its creation, the French novelist Marcel Proust said of Jean-Siméon Chardin’s audacious self-portrait, “This old oddity is so intelligent, so crazy . . . above all, so much of an artist.” In a fitting finale to a long, successful career as a painter of still lifes and genre scenes, Chardin turned in his last decade to a new medium, pastel, and to a new subject matter, portraits (primarily self-portraits). Eye problems arising from lead-based oil paint poisoning were the partial cause of this dramatic change. Of his thirteen extant pastel self-portraits, the most famous are versions of the example seen here, with the casually dressed, aging artist in his studio. A virtuoso colorist, the septuagenarian here revealed a joyously free stroke and palette. Nonetheless, the construction of the figure is solid and rigorous, adding to his powerful presence. This composition was created at the same time as a portrait of the artist’s wife for the 1775 Salon (Musée du Louvre, Paris). A year later, Chardin—with greater daring—replicated the pair. These later portraits were separated for almost two hundred years, until they were reunited in the collection of the Art…

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0