Young Gentleman Playing a Harp

A young harpist stands beside his instrument, which is decorated with carved and gilded foliage garlands. He is plucking some strings and is apparently listening attentively to the sound. His gaze is directed towards the miniature’s spectator though, as if he wants to connect with him.

The creation of the sitter’s clothing in bright tones is particularly successful. His white shirt with the full flared sleeves is portrayed with a strong sense of luxuriance. It is designed in delicate colour shades and impressively heightened by broadly applied opaque white. The brown silk waistcoat fascinates with the different nuances of its lustre, which the artist studied observantly and created in a way that has the viewer actually feel the characteristic quality of the fabric.

Chasselat enrolled at the drawing school of the Parisian Academy for his training in 1767. In the students’ list his age was registered to be nineteen, which means he would have been born around 1748.¹ His first miniatures date from the mid-1770s. Quite obviously, he was active in the sphere of Peter Adolf Hall (see the essay by Bernd Pappe in Pappe/Schmieglitz-Otten 2012, pp. 71–91). The dark painted lash line which descends abruptly at the side is found in other works by the artist as well. Evidently it is more due to the artist’s creative expression than to a feature observed in the sitter.

B. P.