1868
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
General Juan Prim (1814-1870) is a 1868 oil by Henri Regnault, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a man in a dark military uniform, gold braid glinting, standing against a stormy sky. Regnault painted this Spanish general just two years before both men died young—Prim in an assassination, Regnault in the Franco-Prussian War. The loose, quick brushwork feels almost modern, like the artist was racing time. To see how light and shadow can make a face feel alive, look up the technique called *chiaroscuro*.
Marie Sterner Galleries, New York by 1938 [illustrated in an advertisement for Sterner Galleries in Art News 36, 26 (1938)]; bought by the Art Institute with Wentworth Greene Field funds, 1947.
Santa Barbara, Museum of Art, The Horse in Art, July–August 1954, cat. 35; traveled to San Francisco, Palace of the Legion of Honor, August–September 1954; Kansas City, W. R. Nelson Gallery, October–November 1954. Baltimore, Maryland, The Walters Art Gallery, Fortuny and his Circle, March 28–May 15, 1970. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Second Empire, 1852–1870: Art in France under Napoleon III, October 1–November 26, 1978, cat. VI-99 (ill.); traveled to Detroit Institute of Arts, January 15–March 18, 1979; Paris, Grand Palais, April 24–July 2, 1979.
Art News (Annual Supplement) 36, 26 (1938), p. 162 (ill.) The Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 365.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Born in Paris on October 31, 1843, Henri-Georges-Alexandre Regnault was the son of Henri Victor Regnault, the celebrated chemist and professor at the Collège de France.
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