Johan Tobias Sergel (1740-1814)

A man of about fifty turns his head toward the viewer, gaze direct and composed, his dark coat and high collar set against a plain, shadowed ground. The sitter is the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel, drawn in Copenhagen in 1794, the year he was elected a foreign member of the Danish Academy. Jens Juel (1745–1802), the leading Danish portraitist of his age, kept the setting deliberately simple, letting the force of the likeness carry the picture. Juel painted a replica at the same time; both are now held by the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.