Joseph Chinard

At left a painting detail of a poised British general. At right a young man depicted in terracotta.
Middle Ground: Reynolds and Chinard, Capturing Fleeting Glory
The power of portraiture is particularly potent on the fourth floor of Frick Madison. Considering two seemingly unrelated likenesses on view—Reynolds’s General John Burgoyne and Chinard’s Étienne Vincent de Margnolas—Rebecca Leonard, Curatorial Assistant, examines the works’ uneasy balance between glory and tragedy, epitomizing portraiture’s poignant reflection of the human condition.
video still of bust of man and Giulio Dalvit
Cocktails with a Curator: Chinard's "Étienne Vincent de Margnolas"

In this week’s episode of Cocktails with a Curator, Assistant Curator Giulio Dalvit discusses the life of sculptor Joseph Chinard, whose terracotta Portrait of Étienne Vincent de Margnolas was acquired for the Frick’s collection in 2004 and is now on view on the fourth floor of Frick Madison. Chinard led a very tumultuous early life, jailed for two months in Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo after running afoul of the papacy with his revolutionary ideas and later banished from the Papal States.