A Comic Actor Dressed as a Gentleman [recto] c. 1729

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater made this drawing, "A Comic Actor Dressed as a Gentleman," using a reddish crayon on paper. The strokes, light and quick, capture a sense of movement and the fleeting expression of a performer. You can almost see the actor shifting his weight, caught between roles, as the artist sketches his form. The red chalk, also called sanguine, blends with the paper to create a warm, soft effect, especially suited to studies of the human form. Pater was working in a milieu saturated with the theater, an industry rife with the same tensions as any other workplace. The rapid gestures of this drawing, and its unfinished quality, suggest the amount of work that went into producing the illusion of refinement, both on stage and in the wider world. Considering the material, making, and context of this artwork allows us to question conventional notions of labor and status, while challenging the distinctions between fine art and everyday life.