A model prepares - Johnny Kemper photographed by Alonzo Hanagan, "Lon of New York", circa 1965

Model tool kit: posing strap, baby oil.

Posing elegantly on the edge of revolution - genre paintings by Michel Garnier

La Rose mal défendue, 1789.

Michel Garnier (1753, Saint-Cloud - 1819, Paris), French painter. His father was employed by the duc d'Orléans, and Garnier went on to work for the duc and his son, the duc de Chartres (the infamous Philippe Égalité who voted for the death of Louis XVI); his earliest known work, dated 1781, is a portrait of the duc d'Orléans. He studied with the painter Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre and, from 1791 until 1814, he was an exhibitor at the Salon in Paris, mainly of genre subjects in the fashion established by such contemporary painters as Marguerite Gérard and Louis-Léopold Boilly. In spite of his connections to the Orléans family and other aristocratic clientele, he didn't seem to suffer during the Revolution, and continued to show at the Salon. Garnier also painted portraits and later, while living on the island of Mauritius between 1801 and 1810, he painted still lifes. In fragile health, he would return to France before his death at the age of sixty-six.

Garnier was one of the most successful of the petits maîtres who flourished during the fading days of the Ancien Régime and who depicted the lifestyles and morals of the upper/middle classes. Worked in a small format, his paintings are full of exquisite, fashionable furnishings and costume, his often doll-like figures going about their days in very chic Parisian interiors; the pursuit of love and its complications are the dominant themes here. (Indeed, many of his paintings carry a frankly erotic charge.) The narratives of his tableaux are rooted in the Rococo, but the often self-consciously dramatic poses of the characters, their arrangement in a relatively shallow pictorial plane, and the precision of detail and the purposeful treatment of light are a product of the Neoclassical; in fact, his work is an unlikely blending of these two radically different artistic movements.

Une élegante á sa toilette, circa 1788. (Usually captioned 1796, but I think that very unlikely.)

Ils sont d'accord, 1786.

Le Lettre, 1791.

La Jeune musicienne, 1788.

Le Départ du dragon, 1789.

Scène de reproches, 1794.

Le Contrat de mariage interrompu, circa 1789.

Le Départ de monsieur de Saint-Marc à la bataille de Fontenoy, 1788.

Jeune fille écoutant une conversation entre deux amants, 1789.

La Douce résistance, 1793.

Une Merveilleuse sous les arcades du Palais Royal, 1787.

Elégante regardant un portrait miniature, before 1792.

Painted rough, painted smooth - ten portraits of men

Self-portrait by Jérôme-Martin Langlois, circa 1830.

Bonsha Gopal Nandi, by Benjamin Hudson, circa 1854-62.

Roundell Cecil Palmer, Viscount Wolmer, later 3rd Earl of Selborne, by Philip de László, 1916.

Frederik VI of Denmark as Crown Prince Regent, by Jens Juel, 1787.

Bon Vivant (self-portrait), by Miroslav Kraljević, 1912.

Portrait of a Young Man, by Bronzino, circa 1550-55.

Fiatal Fiú (Young Man), by Gyula Benczúr, circa 1880s. 

Victor Gay, by Alexandre Laemlein, 1845.

Jean Cocteau, by Jacques-Émile Blanche, 1912.

Portrait of a Young Man, by Robert-Jacques-François-Faust Lefèvre, circa 1805.

A lady and her harp

Madame Victoire [Marie Louise Thérèse Victoire de France, daughter of Louis XV] Playing the Harp, by Étienne Aubry, 1773.

 The marquise de Chamillard (?), by Firmin Massot, 1810.

A Young Lady Playing the Harp, by Jan Tilius, circa 1680s.

Louisa, Lady Clarges, by Thomas Gainsborough, circa 1780.

Kitty Stephens, later Countess of Essex, by George Henry Harlow, circa 1815-20.

Lady Frances Pelham-Clinton née Seymour-Conway, Countess of Lincoln, by William Hoare, circa 1775-78.

Portrait of a Young Lady Playing a Harp (miniature), French School, circa 1770-75.

María de los Dolores Collado y Echagüe, duquesa de Bailén, by Vicente Palmaroli y González, circa 1866-69.

St. Cecilia (Mrs. Richard Crowninshield Derby), by John Singleton Copley, 1803.

Cover for Vogue magazine, by A. É. (André Édouard) Marty, 1926.

Sarah Curran Playing the Harp, by William Beechey, circa 1805.

Elizabeth, Lady Craven, later margravine of Anspach, by Thomas Beach, 177(6?).

The Harpist (Florence Griswold), by Alphonse Jongers, 1903.

Marianne Dorothy Harland, later Mrs. William Dalrymple, by Richard Cosway, 1779.

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It should be mentioned that some ladies appreciate just a bit more freedom of movement whilst engaging with their instrument.

Venus Playing the Harp (Allegory of Music), by Giovanni Lanfranco, circa 1630-34.

The extended Orléans family gathered in England for the funeral of Marie-Amélie, former Queen of the French

"La nombreuse famille des Orléans réunie en Grande Bretagne lors des funérailles de l'ex-reine des français, SAR la princesse Marie-Amélie de Bourbon et des Deux Siciles."

Queen Marie-Amélie died at Claremont House in Surrey on 24 March 1866. She was eighty-three years old, having outlived her husband Louis-Philippe by sixteen years, and having lived in exile for nearly twenty. Clarement House had been lent to the deposed royal couple by Queen Victoria, and in this photograph Marie-Amélie's surviving children, grandchildren, and other members of the extended Orléans family are to be seen gathered on the grounds there. After the funeral ceremonies, the Queen's coffin would rest in the cemetery chapel at nearby Weybridge along with that of her husband and other members of the family who had died in exile. It was not until ten years later that their remains were allowed to be returned to France, where they now reside in the Orléans mausoleum at Dreux.

Illustrations of the Queen's lying-in-state and her funeral procession.

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Click to see the full, unreduced panoramic image.