Portrait of Père Tanguy

1887

Oil on canvas, 92 × 75 cm. Musée Rodin, Paris

An older man in a straw hat sits before a bright patchwork of pictures. The portrait gives a modest neighborhood figure the steady calm of a sage.

Behind the sitter hangs a wall of vivid woodblock prints from Japan, collected by the two brothers. Here the Japanese influence is put in plain view.
Notice how still he sits, facing us squarely, his hands folded together at his waist.
Unmixed colors, set against their opposites, go down in visible, carefully placed strokes.
Rodin acquired it, possibly in 1894, perhaps drawn by a shared love of Japanese art.
Rodin also owned two other paintings by the same artist.

The sitter, Julien-François Tanguy (1825–94), sold art materials from a small shop on the Rue Clauzel. Painters short of cash often paid him in pictures.

Japonisme: The European taste for Japanese art, especially woodblock prints, in the later 1800s.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art