Youth Sleeping in a Chair

François André Vincent

ca. 1771–72 · Black chalk, heightened with white on brownish paper · Drawings and Prints

Vincent was trained in the atelier of Joseph Marie Vien and traveled to Rome in 1771 to study at the Académie de France. While a gifted draftsman, he had a mutable style, close in his early years to that of Jean Honoré Fragonard, then shifting more toward Neoclassicism in the 1780s, though he always maintained a natural vigor in his handling of ink and chalk. This study of a young man asleep in a chair dates to his early years at the French Academy in Rome (1771-75), where, as part of the formal curriculum, the students learned techniques for depicting drapery by making studies after posed models. Vincent here used black and white chalks to convincingly render the fall of light on the heavy drapery of the dozing figure.

Artist

François André Vincent

Date

ca. 1771–72

Medium

Black chalk, heightened with white on brownish paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Rogers Fund, 1962