Self Portrait Yawning, c.1780 Joseph Ducreux (1735-1802)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Joseph Ducreux also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Self Portrait Yawning is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

At first glance the canvas surprises with its frank immediacy. A man of middle age, head wrapped in a soft turban, yawns without constraint, the cavern of his mouth disclosed and his right arm pitched forward as though to pierce the picture plane. The crimson coat gathers in loose folds, the buff waistcoat strains across a rounded abdomen, and the sitter’s torso lists backward, balancing the thrust of the arm. Every detail conspires to collapse distance, placing the viewer within reach of an almost audible exhalation.

Colour serves as both anchor and accelerant. The richly saturated red, pitched against an opaque green-brown ground, radiates warmth while isolating the figure in a shallow stage of space. Flesh tints - peach, rose, the faintest violet around the eyes - are modulated with restrained highlights, granting the yawning mouth a wet, palpable immediacy. The chromatic drama is heightened by the white turban and shirt, compact areas of brilliance that punctuate the composition like catches of light on metal, guiding the gaze upward and across.

Close inspection reveals a studied duality of touch. Broader passages of wet-in-wet handling in the coat allow vermilion and umber to mingle, suggesting movement within the fibre, whereas the modelling of the face and hand is executed with smaller, deliberate strokes, each calibrated to articulate muscle beneath skin. The raised sleeve is foreshortened with confident economy, its creases resolving into abstraction at the picture’s edge, a reminder that description here submits to expressive intent.

Compositionally, the picture hinges on diagonals that criss-cross the rectangle: arm and torso form a sweeping arc, while the head tilts on an opposing axis. The resulting tension draws the viewer’s eye in a spiral, from sleeve to mouth to the clenched left hand that brackets the yawning gesture. Negative space is reduced to a narrow border of background, sharpening the sense that the figure occupies our physical territory, not an imagined interior.

Painted on the cusp of the French Revolution, the work stands as a subtle challenge to the polished decorum of ancien-régime portraiture. Ducreux trained at court yet aligns here with the period’s fascination for physiognomy, advancing the notion that character resides in unguarded expression. The image invites reflection on self-presentation at a historical moment when inherited status was being questioned, and it anticipates later explorations of persona in photography and performance. Its enduring interest lies in that rare fusion of scientific curiosity and theatrical immediacy.