Self-Portrait at Easel
Hippolyte Petitjean (French, 1854–1929)
1897
- Medium
- conté crayon with charcoal on laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 62 x 47.7 cm (24 7/16 x 18 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In this self-portrait, Hippolyte Petitjean depicted himself standing before an easel while gazing directly at the viewer. The drawing is one of five representations of himself that the artist created late in his career based on his admiration for Rembrandt van Rijn. Petitjean was deeply influenced by the anarchist writer Charles-Albert, who argued for the utopian potential of artmaking, suggesting that the work was meant as a broader statement about the place of the artist within contemporary society.
