Théobald Chartran

{{infobox artist | image = Théobald Chartran.jpg | caption = Théobald Chartran | birth_date = {{birth date|1849|07|20|df=yes}} | birth_place = Besançon, France | death_date = {{death date and age|1907|07|16|1849|07|20|df=yes}} | death_place = Paris, France | known_for = Painting | training = Alexandre Cabanel<br>École des Beaux-Arts | spouse = | notable_works = | awards = Prix de Rome }} '''Théobald Chartran''' (20 July 1849 – 16 July 1907) was a French academic painter and portrait artist.

==Early life== Chartran was born in Besançon, France on 20 July 1849. His father was Councilor at the Court of Appeals and he was the nephew of Gen. Chartran who was executed in the Restoration because of his imperialistic tendencies. Through his mother, he was descended from Count Théobald Dillon,<ref>{{cite ODNB |title=Dillon, Théobald Hyacinthe [known as Chevalier Dillon] (1745–1792), army officer in the French service |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-7664 | year=2004 | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/7664 | isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 |access-date=16 April 2021 |language=en}}</ref> who was murdered by his own troops in 1792.<ref name="1907Obit"/>

While his parents encouraged him to study law or enter the military, young Chartran was inclined towards art. He studied at the Lycée Victor-Hugo in Besançon before heading to Paris in order to devote himself entirely to the study of art under Alexandre Cabanel,<ref name="1907Obit"/> later attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.<ref name="Tnpg">{{cite web |title=Théobald Chartran ('T') |url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp06781/theobald-chartran-t |website=www.npg.org.uk |publisher=National Portrait Gallery, London |access-date=16 April 2021 |language=en}}</ref>

==Career== [[File:Emma Calvé, by Théobald Chartran.jpg|left|thumb|Théobald Chartran, ''Emma Calvé as Carmen'', 1894, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute]] In 1871, the body of Georges Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, "who had perished in the disorders of the commune", was exhumed in order to receive the last honors, and Chartran made a portrait of the Archbishop in his official robes and on his catafalque. This painting was widely admired by the public and for it, he won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1877.<ref name="1907Obit"/>

As "T", he was one of the artists responsible for occasional caricatures of ''Vanity Fair'' magazine, specializing in French and Italian subjects. His work for ''Vanity Fair'' included Pope Leo XIII, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Umberto I of Italy, William Henry Waddington, all in 1878, Charles Gounod, Giuseppe Verdi, Ernest Renan, Jules Grévy, Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, Victor Hugo, Marshal MacMahon, Granier de Cassagnac, Louis Blanc, and Alexandre Dumas ''fils'', all in 1879.

Among Chartran's work is his portrait of René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laennec, the inventor of the stethoscope, Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, Benoît-Constant Coquelin, the Maharaja of Kapurthala and the Countess of Maupeou.<ref name="1906Portraits">{{cite news |title=M. CHARTRAN HERE AGAIN.; Will Paint Some Portraits but Not Miss Roosevelt in Her Wedding Dress. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1906/01/15/archives/m-chartran-here-again-will-paint-some-portraits-but-not-miss.html |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=15 January 1906}}</ref> His individual-subject portraiture is often characterized by a rich background gradient, embodied in ''Emma Calvé as Carmen'' (1894).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Emma Calvé as Carmen |url=https://www.clarkart.edu/artpiece/detail/emma-calve-as-carmen |access-date=2023-06-15 |website=www.clarkart.edu}}</ref>

===President Roosevelt=== thumb|right|''Signing of the Peace Protocol Between Spain and the United States, August 12, 1898'', by Chartran (1899) In 1899, Henry Clay Frick commissioned Chartran to create a painting of the scene when the peace protocol at the close of the Spanish–American War was signed in the Cabinet Room.<ref name="1899Commission">{{cite news |title=PICTURE FOR WHITE HOUSE.; M. Chartran's Commission from Mr. Frick Executed -- Represents Signing of the Spanish Peace Protocol. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1899/12/05/archives/picture-for-white-house-m-chartrans-commission-from-mr-frick.html |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=5 December 1899}}</ref> In October 1903, Frick gifted the picture, which had cost $20,000, to the United States, which President Roosevelt accepted.<ref name="1903Gift">{{cite news |last1=Times |first1=Special to The New York |title=GIFT TO THE WHITE HOUSE; Historical Painting by Chartran Presented by H.C. Frick. It Represents the Signature of the Peace Protocol at the Close of the War with Spain. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1903/10/27/archives/gift-to-the-white-house-historical-painting-by-chartran-presented.html |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=27 October 1903}}</ref>

In 1902, Chartran was commissioned to paint President Theodore Roosevelt's official portrait<ref>[https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9ac31dca-71b6-4d68-e040-e00a18064cc6 Roosevelt portrait]</ref> after successfully completing portraits of Mrs. Roosevelt in 1902 and Alice Roosevelt in 1901.<ref name="1903Arrival">{{cite news |title=FRENCH PAINTERS HERE.; M. Chartran to Paint the President's Portrait -- M. Parent Gets a Dis- agreeable Surprise. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1903/01/04/archives/french-painters-here-m-chartran-to-paint-the-presidents-portrait-m.html |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=4 January 1903}}</ref> In discussing his experience with painting the president to ''Le Figaro'', he said that it "was difficult to get the President to sit still. I never had a more restless or more charming sitter. He speaks French like a boulevardier, and wittily." Chartran "did not try to depict the official Roosevelt, but rather the private man."<ref name="1903Portrait">{{cite news |title=ARTIST'S VIEW OF ROOSEVELT.; Theobald Chartran Says He Never Had "a More Restless or More Charming Sitter." |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1903/04/25/archives/artists-view-of-roosevelt-theobald-chartran-says-he-never-had-a.html |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=25 April 1903}}</ref> When Roosevelt saw the final product he hated it and hid it in the darkest corner of the White House.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Barber | first1=J. | last2=Verone | first2=A. | title=Theodore Roosevelt, Icon of the American Century | publisher=National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution | year=1998 | isbn=978-0-295-97753-9 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XGN3AAAAMAAJ | access-date=January 30, 2018 | page=50}}</ref> When family members called it the "Mewing Cat" for making him look so harmless, he had it destroyed and hired John Singer Sargent to paint a more masculine portrait.<ref>{{cite news |title=PAINTING THE PRESIDENT'S PORTRAIT; Orlando Rouland Spends two Weeks in the Executive Office Sketching Mr Roosevelt as He Conducts the Nation's Business; Then a Week in the Green Room with the President on the Model Stand in Consultation with Cabinet Officers and Ministers |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1907/02/10/archives/painting-the-presidents-portrait-orlando-rouland-spends-two-weeks.html |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=10 February 1907}}</ref>

==Gallery== <gallery mode=packed heights=200> File:René Laënnec.png|René Laënnec – National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, USA File:Edith Roosevelt Official Portrait.jpg|Edith Roosevelt's official portrait as First Lady (1902) File:Portrait of President Roosevelt 1902.jpg|T. Chartran.--Portrait of Président Roosevelt. (1902) File:Alice Roosevelt Portrait.jpg|Alice Roosevelt's portrait

File:Brooklyn Museum - Portrait of Washington A. Roebling - Théobald Chartran.jpg|Théobald Chartran – Washington A. Roebling – Brooklyn Museum File:Chartran Madame Collas and her Daughter Giselle 1903.JPG|''Madame Collas et sa fille'', 1903, Paris, Musée d'Orsay. File:Sadi Carnot - Théobald Chartran.jpg|''Portrait de Sadi Carnot''. File:Théobald Chartran - Cardinal James Gibbons - NPG.91.196 - National Portrait Gallery.jpg|Cardinal James Gibbons (1904), National Portrait Gallery </gallery>

==Personal life== thumb|right|Villa Salagnon, 1968 Chartran was married to a woman who "descended from a famous family" and was "gifted with a voice of sweetness and considerable power and possessed of strong lyric ambition, which, however, she did not gratify by a career on the stage."<ref name="1907Obit"/> Her portrait appeared in ''The Pall Mall Magazine'' in 1906.<ref name="PallMall1906">{{cite book |title=The Pall Mall Magazine |date=1906 |publisher=George Routledge & Sons, Limited |page=45 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YxnnAAAAMAAJ |access-date=16 April 2021 |language=en}}</ref>

In September 1900, Chartran acquired the Île de Salagnon (also known as "Swan Island"), one of the five islands on Lake Geneva, located between Vevey and Montreux.<ref name="NYT1907">{{cite news |title=THEOBALD CHARTRAN |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/75884085/theobald-chartran/ |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=New-York Tribune |date=18 July 1907 |pages=7}}</ref> On the island, he had a Florentine villa built by architect Louis Villard, as well as a small port. There, Chartran organized sumptuous evenings with illustrious characters and fireworks. When he died, the island was taken over by a Russian count, a Zurich merchant, and then an American, Mary Shillito. Today it is known as Villa Salagnon.<ref name="petitfute">{{cite web |title=Natural site - SALAGNON ISLAND - Montreux |url=https://www.petitfute.co.uk/v53425-montreux-1820/c1173-visites-points-d-interet/c974-site-naturel/202464-ile-de-salagnon.html |website=www.petitfute.co.uk |access-date=16 April 2021 |language=en}}</ref>

His wife died just before his last visit to America in January 1906. Chartran died in Paris on 16 July 1907.<ref name="1907Obit">{{cite news |title=THEOBALD CHARTRAN DEAD. He Painted Portraits of President and Mrs. Roosevelt, Pope Pius and Cardinal Gibbons. |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/75881164/theobald-chartran-dead/ |access-date=16 April 2021 |work=The Boston Globe |date=17 July 1907 |pages=5}}</ref>

==See also== *Place des États-Unis

==References== {{reflist|30em}}

==External links== {{Commons category}} * [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/field/subjec/searchterm/Chartran,%20Th%C3%A9obald,%201849-1907%20--%20Exhibitions/mode/exact Théobald Chartran exhibition catalogs]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chartran, Theobald}} Category:1849 births Category:1907 deaths Category:19th-century French painters Category:French male painters Category:20th-century French painters Category:20th-century French male artists Category:Academic artists Category:Artists from Besançon Category:Vanity Fair (British magazine) artists Category:19th-century French male artists