4479

Jean Dupuy 1914

Half-length slightly to the left, full face to the viewer, wearing a jacket, a white shirt with a wing collar, and a bow tie

Oil on canvas [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: P. A. de László / Paris / 1914 I.

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 95: [note by the artist: Paris] / Jean Dupuy / 19 janvier 1914

De László regularly stayed with his friend, the duc de Guiche [11801], in Paris where he had used a studio in the house.^[1] He arrived in the city 12 January for four weeks of intense work, during which time this portrait was completed as well those of:  Baroness Conrad von Meyendorff [10138], Mercedes Mantels de de Bruyn [4822], Comtesse Robert de Pourtalès [4848], and his host’s son Charles de Gramont [8771]. On his return to London 10 February, his wife Lucy noted he was “weak & pulled down from work & flu.”^[2] De László painted the sitter’s daughter-in-law, Madame Paul Dupuy, in 1931 [111985].

Jean Dupuy was born on 1 October 1844 at Saint-Palais, Gironde, the son of Jacques Dupuy, a mercer and farm labourer, and his wife Magdeleine Thérèse, who grew up in an orphanage in Bordeaux. Jean was educated at the local school and received instruction from the priest and the mayor of Saint-Palais. He subsequently worked with his father both at the shop and in the fields, but against his parents’ wishes gave up both to work as a courier for a bailiff.

In October 1865, he moved to Paris with his brother Charles to work for a solicitor and later bought a practice in rue d’Aboukir, which became one of the largest in Paris. He married Sophie-Alexandrine Legrand, whose parents were gilders in the Marais. There were three children of the marriage: Marie (born 1873), Pierre (born 1876), and Paul-Jacques (born 1878).

Dupuy began his political career in 1891 when he was elected Senator of the Hautes-Pyrénées, representing the left-wing Republican Party. He was elected again in 1900 and 1909. He served as Minister of Agriculture in the first Waldeck-Rousseau government and was instrumental in the foundation of the Crédit Agricole. After the resignation of Waldeck-Rousseau in 1902, Dupuy waited seven years for another ministerial portfolio. In 1906, he was elected President of the Republican Union and was Commerce and Industry Minister in the Briand government from 1909 until 1911, when he was elected Vice President of the Senate. He was also appointed Minister of Public Works in the Poincaré government in 1912. During the First World War Dupuy was a member of the War Committee.

Dupuy was also President of the Committee of the French Press Associations and was the owner of two newspapers: Le Siècle and Le Petit Parisien, which had the largest circulation in the world, with over a million copies a day printed in 1902. He took part in the celebrations for Maréchal Foch in Tarbes but returned to Paris ill and died on 31 December 1919.

EXHIBITED :

• Paris, Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, 1914, no. 678

• Hôtel Jean Charpentier, Paris, Exposition P.A. László, June 1931, no. 43

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a painter, London, 1939, p. 282

•Salon de la  Société nationale des Beaux-Arts, Baschet, Paris, 1914, ill. p. 178

•Jolly, Jean, Dictionnaire des Parlementaires français, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1960-1977

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 136

•László, Lucy de, 1914 diary, private collection, 10 February entry

KF 2017