Joseph Duplessis

Who was Joseph Duplessis?

Joseph-Siffred Duplessis was a French painter, known for the clarity and immediacy of his portraits.

He was born in Carpentras, near Avignon, into a family with an artistic bent and received his first training from his father, a surgeon and talented amateur. He subsequently studied with Joseph-Gabriel Imbert, who had been a pupil of Charles Le Brun. From 1744–47 or later he worked in Rome, in the atelier of Pierre Subleyras, who was also from the south of France. In Italy Duplessis became fast friends with Joseph Vernet, another Occitan.

He returned to Carpentras, spent a brief time in Lyon then arrived about 1752 in Paris, where he was accepted into the Académie de Saint-Luc and exhibited some portraits, which were now his specialty, in 1764, but did not achieve much notice until his exhibition of ten paintings at the Paris salon of 1769, very well received and selected for special notice by Denis Diderot; the Académie de peinture et de sculpture accepted him in the category of portraitist, considered a lesser category at the time. He continued to exhibit at the Paris salons, both finished paintings and sketches, until 1791, and once more, in 1801.