An artist and private customer in the 18th-century Paris. Survey on the development of portrait painting

Abstract

The interaction between a painter and his donator as a phenomenon of art history gives many opportunities to the research of social aspect of art. A private customer was isolated from any government institution such as the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. He did not pretend to be a connoisseur or adviser of painters but he had individual taste for art and his personally developed demands for it. As a field for dialog between painter and his patrons the portraiture appeared to become one of the most sought-after genres in 18^th-century French society. The article aims to highlight a taste of an average French customer of the time showing how he wished to see himself and his loved ones on the canvas, what attributes he preferred to surround his person, how the client’s wishes coordinated with the creative ambitions and individual creative style of the artist were realized in the finished works .The author focuses on perception of the portrait painting by customers and some persons responsible to shaping and development of the ‘Academic doctrine’. The author of the article attentively scrutinized a wide gamut of sources, written by theoretical, critics, and connoisseurs, in which the tastes of private individuals and the painters who please them are subjected to a detailed critique. So the 18^th-century portrait painting is produced as a result of collaboration of painters and private customers whose identity, formed under a social and cultural impact, needed adequate expression in the arts.