A Portrait of Charlotte Corday

 

Pierre-Alexandre Wille, Portrait of Charlotte Corday, 1793
Maison (1972), Plate 34

I found it this striking image of  Charlotte Corday, drawn by Pierre-Alexandre Wille, reproduced in an article of 1972 by the American art historian K. E. Maison.  This photograph, published for the first time by Maison, is the only known record of Wille's drawing; it dates from 1939 when the picture was was included in the Carnavalet's exhibition for the 150th anniversary of the Revolution. At that time the owner was listed as Monsieur L. Brinquart, Paris. The picture is described as in red chalk, signed and dated 1793; it measures only 59cm x 51cm. 

Pierre-Alexandre Wille was son of the German artist Johann Georg Wille.  Born in Paris in 1748, he was a pupil of Greuze and later of Vien.  He was a talented draughtsman and a committed Revolutionary; the Carnavalet owns a sketch of Danton by him, plus several studies of splendidly bewhiskered soldiers. By coincidence he was, in 1793, just like Jean-Jacques Hauer, an officer in the National Guard for the section Théâtre-Français. He too, therefore, might have attended Corday's trial or seen her in prison. The details of her clothing, particularly the preposterous bonnet, are much the same as in Hauer's famous study.   

There are many Charlotte Cordays, but this one seems particularly close to real life. Wille catches perfectly the air of calm indifference which so astonished onlookers at the trial.  Whereas Hauer's Corday is slightly fey, Wille gives us a robust and determined woman - a woman quite capable of plunging  a kitchen knife into a man's chest and actually killing him.

Hauer's original sketch,  Musée Lambinet

Reference

K. E. Maison, "Pierre-Alexandre Wille and the French Revolution", Master drawings (1972) Vol.10(1): 34-5' 80-84.[available on JStor]
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1553113