Portret van Jules Chéret 1895

This photograph captures Jules Chéret, a figure who significantly influenced the visual language of Parisian culture. Though the photographer remains anonymous, their lens provides us with insight into the performative aspects of identity and artistic persona at that time. Chéret is depicted here with the accoutrements of a bourgeois gentleman, but there is a casualness that hints at his innovative spirit. Smoking a cigarette, leaning back on a ladder, cane in hand, his posture pushes back against the formal conventions of portraiture, suggesting the artist’s own self-awareness of how he is viewed. Consider how this portrait reflects both the artistic freedoms and the social expectations placed upon artists in late 19th-century Paris. It invites us to consider the artist's role in shaping, as well as responding to, the cultural values of his time. It makes you wonder, what aspects of himself did Chéret seek to project, and what was deliberately obscured?