Portrait de Monsieur Carré de Candé et de ses trois fils ("Portrait of Monsieur Carré de Candé and his three sons") by Jean Valade

Born in Poitiers in 1710, Jean Valade moved to Paris at the age of 29. His accreditation in 1750, followed by admission to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture four years later, testify to his perfect integration into the Parisian artistic community. A former pupil of Charles-Antoine Coypel, then First Painter of the King, Jean Valade was subsequently appointed Ordinary Painter of the King, and was granted an allowance by the Duc d'Orléans.

Over the years, the painter built up a following of noblemen and aristocrats, who mainly commissioned him to paint portraits, either in pastel or in oil, which set him apart from the two great 18th-century pastelists, Quentin de La Tour and Jean-Baptiste Perroneau. He produced his best-known paintings in the 1760s, including portraits of Pierre and Élisabeth Faventines, from a wealthy merchant family. Jean Valade's art was strongly criticized by Denis Diderot, who criticized his parallel activity as an art dealer. At the Salon of 1769, he declared that Valade "is not a poor painter, but a very poor painter, because one cannot do two jobs at once.”.

Jean Valade may not have mastered the art of rendering the psychological finesse of his characters, but here he has produced an original family portrait that bears witness to the social aspirations of his patrons. One of the children draws, the other holds a musical partition, in an interior marked by the arts and letters, as indicated by the flat desk by André-Charles Boulle from 1710, an emblematic piece of furniture by the best-known cabinetmaker and foundryman of the 18th century, as well as the clock surmounted by an Amur surmounting Time. The idea is to embody a world that is certainly sumptuous, but marked by enlightened taste. It should be noted, however, that the same secretary, clock and decor are to be found in the portrait of Mr. and Mrs. de Faventines, suggesting that the painter was proposing a form of composition to the client, with his own models for accessories and decor.

The father of the family represented here, François-Charles Carré, seigneur de Candé, was a councillor-secretary to the king, president-treasurer of France at the finance office and domain chamber of the generality of La Rochelle, where he built a mansion now known as Carré de Candé. His older brother, Jean-Antoine Carré, lord of Saint-Gemme, was also an advisor and secretary to the king, as was Louis-Charles Carré, esquire, lord of Varennes. The Carré family jointly owned a very large sugar mill in Quartier-Morin, Haiti, which they inherited from their father, a merchant from La Rochelle. Bordeaux, Nantes and La Rochelle are the French cities, along with Marseille since 1760, where their interests are closely intertwined with those left by the colonists in the West Indies.

This portrait marks the rise of a family whose position as secretary to the king is in itself a strong indication of their wealth, as well as their recent emergence from the merchant bourgeoisie.

Georges Debien, « Le Club des colons de La Rochelle (septembre 1789-octobre 1790) », Revue d'histoire des colonies, tome 43, n°152-153, 1956, p. 338-368.

Jean Valade, Peintre ordinaire du roi, 1710-1787, Musée Sainte-Croix, 22 juin - 31 août 1993, Poitiers, Musées de la ville de Poitiers et de la Société des antiquaires de l'Ouest, 1993.

Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, Online edition, Jean Valade.