Jean-Baptiste Frénet, wild and civilized - two self-portraits

Circa 1850s.

1842.

This was most likely a study for a projected work.

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Jean-Baptiste Frénet (31 January 1814, Lyons - 12 August 1889, Charly), French painter, sculptor, photographer, and politician based in Lyons. The son of a silk manufacturer, he learned the artistic aspects of the silk trade from his father and attended the School of Fine Arts in Lyons, studying painting and life drawing. At the age of twenty-one he moved to Paris to continue his training in the studio of Ingres. Soon after, Ingres was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome, and Frénet and a group of fellow artists followed their teacher there, forming a small colony around Ingres in the Villa Medici. He returned to Lyons in 1837 and for the next few years he traveled between France and Italy. He exhibited but was not a critical success. He showed at the Salon of 1841 in Paris but, winning no prizes, decided to relocate to Charly, a village near Lyons, where he had bought a house. He appears to have married and had children. He continued his work, mostly choosing religious subjects, and his other creative endeavors including printmaking, and sculpture. And he was an important figure in the new field of photography, though most of his contributions were unknown to the public until recently. He went on to become mayor of Charly, but when he applied to become a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Lyons, with the support of Ingres, he was denied. From 1850 he worked on a large fresco project for the Basilique Saint-Martin d'Ainay in Lyons, but moisture caused his work to deteriorate and his sponsors refused to pay; the work was ultimately destroyed. Embittered, it appears Frénet didn't paint anything else before his death at the age of seventy-five, almost forty years later.

Another self-portrait, date unknown, the image taken from the extant paper negative.

The calotype paper negative.

A contemporary print of the calotype by Frénet; the obvious alterations would most likely have been made by the artist, himself.