Richard Clague Jr. (1821-1873)
1850
Oil on canvas
Loaned by H. P. Crane
| Self-Portrait Richard Clague Jr. (1821-1873) 1850 Oil on canvas Loaned by H. P. Crane |
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| Baptized in New Orleans at
St. Louis Cathedral, Richard Clague Jr. was born at Isle
of Man, England. He divided his time between New Orleans
and France. His father, a wealthy New Orleans
businessman, encouraged his son’s artistic
ambitions. Clague studied art in Switzerland with Jean
Charles Humbert and in Paris at Ecole des Beaux Arts, as
well as in New Orleans with French panorama painter Leon
Pomarède. In 1856 he was commissioned by French Emperor
Napoleon III to document the Lesseps expedition to
Alberia in search of the source of the Nile River. During the Civil War, Clague served briefly as a commissioned second lieutenant in the Tenth Louisiana Infantry of the Confederate Army. Credited with establishing the Louisiana school of landscape painting, Clague influenced and taught many artists including William Buck, Marshall J. Smith, and E. B. D. Fabrino Julio. The twenty-nine-year-old Clague was probably at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris when he finished this self-portrait. He dedicated this piece to his grandmother Madame Pierre de la Roche of New Orleans with an inscription in the upper right corner of the canvas which reads, A Ma Chere Grand Mere. The museum has two additional Clague portraits of Dr. Warren Stone, a prestigious Louisiana surgeon and Mrs. Gueynard, a New Orleans matron. By the
same artist: |