Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans (1801-1888)
1838
Oil on canvas
| Clara Mazureau Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans (1801-1888) 1838 Oil on canvas |
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| Born in Belgium,
Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans was trained in the French
neoclassical tradition of portraiture. News of fellow
artist Jean Joseph Vaudechamp’s good fortune in
finding patrons probably led Amans to visit Louisiana
since the two artists traveled on the same ship from
France to New Orleans in 1836 and 1837. Following
Vaudechamp’s departure from Louisiana in 1839, Amans
assumed the role as the most celebrated portraitist in
Louisiana. In the mid 1840s he married Marquerite Azoline
Landreaux, the daughter of a St. Charles Parish sugar
planter, and purchased Trinity Plantation on Bayou
Lafourche. Amans and his wife moved back to France to
1856, never to return to Louisiana. Clara Mazureau, whose portrait Amans painted when she was a young girl, was the daughter of Aimee Grima and Etienne Mazureau, attorney general of Louisiana. Amans completed the portraits of several members of the Grima and Mazureau families in the 1840s. In this portrait Amans used his favored three quarter length pose. Influenced by the French neoclassical artists Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Jacques Louis David, Amans emphasized meticulous draftsmanship and realism with particular attention to the sitter’s face and hands. By the same artist: Mrs. Gustave
Miltenberger (née Corinne Knott) |