Portrait of a Man

The small spot of red on this man's lapel marks a member of the Légion d'honneur, and it is the reason for the name usually attached to him. Tradition identifies the sitter as François Rude, the sculptor from Dijon who received the order in 1833, after his statue of a young Neapolitan fisherman playing with a tortoise was shown at the Salon. In the years that followed Rude carved the great relief of the volunteers of 1792 marching out to war on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the group Parisians call La Marseillaise. The Boston museum leaves the identification open, since no document has been found to settle it, and it gives the picture no date. The canvas itself shows a heavily bearded man sitting square to us in a pale coat, his hands clasped on his knee, against a dark brown room. It is about 34 centimetres high, with Corot's name lettered at the lower left.