Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (22 September 1725 – 1 April 1802) was a French painter known for the clarity and immediacy of his portraits.
Also recorded as Joseph Siffrède Duplessis · Joseph Siffred Duplessis · Joseph Silfrède Duplessis · Joseph Sifrede Duplessis
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis

Joseph-Siffred Duplessis · Public domain
- Name
- Joseph Duplessis
- Birth Name
- Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
- Born
- 22 September 1725
- Birthplace
- Carpentras, Papal States
- Died
- 1 April 1802
- Place of death
- Versailles, France
- Known for
- Painting
- Nationality
- France.
- Occupation
- painter and draftsperson.
- Fields
- painting.
- Teachers
- Pierre Subleyras.
- Languages
- French.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (22 September 1725 – 1 April 1802) was a French painter known for the clarity and immediacy of his portraits.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
not yet certified
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q2286906
In this article
Biography
Biography
Training under Pierre Subleyras is recorded. Marie-Geneviève Bouliard is recorded as having studied under Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait and landscape. Places of work recorded in the authority are Rome, Carpentras and Paris. Positions recorded include court painter. Works named in the authority record are Portrait of Louis XVI, King of France. Work by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis is recorded in the collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Nationalmuseum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum and Palace of Versailles.

Benjamin Franklin. Engraving after J. S. Duplessis, 1778., 1778, by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis · Wellcome Collection, London · Wellcome Collection

Benjamin Franklin. Oil (?) painting after J. S. Duplessis., by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis · Wellcome Collection, London · Wellcome Collection
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Joseph Duplessis • Birth Name — Joseph-Siffred Duplessis • Born — 22 September 1725 • Birthplace — Carpentras, Papal States • Died — 1 April 1802 • Place of death — Versailles, France • Known for — Painting
Early life
Early life
He was born in Carpentras, near Avignon, into a family with an artistic bent and received his first training from his father, a surgeon and talented amateur. He subsequently studied with Joseph Gabriel Imbert (1666–1749), who had been a pupil of Charles Le Brun. From 1744 to 1747 or later he worked in Rome, in the atelier of Pierre Subleyras (1699–1749), who was also from the south of France. In Italy Duplessis became fast friends with Joseph Vernet, another Provençal speaking Occitania.
Career
Career
Duplessis returned to Carpentras, spent a brief time in Lyon then arrived about 1752 in Paris, where he was accepted into the Académie de Saint-Luc and exhibited some portraits, which were now his specialty, in 1764, but did not achieve much notice until his exhibition of ten paintings at the Paris Salon of 1769, very well received and selected for special notice by Denis Diderot; the Académie de peinture et de sculpture accepted him in the category of portraitist, considered a lesser category at the time. He continued to exhibit at the Paris salons, both finished paintings and sketches, until 1791, and once more, in 1801. His portrait of the Dauphine in 1771 and his appointment as a peintre du Roi assured his success: most of his surviving portraits date from the 1770s and 1780s. He received privileged lodgings in the Galeries du Louvre. In the Revolution, he withdrew to safe obscurity at Carpentras during the Reign of Terror. Afterwards, from 1796, he served as curator at the newly founded museum formed at Versailles, so recently emptied of its furnishings at the Revolutionary sales. His uncompromising self-portrait at this time of his life is at Versailles, where he died. The rue Joseph Duplessis in Magnac-sur-Touvre is named after him.
Work
Work
• Illustration — Duplessis' Benjamin Franklin on the U.S. hundred dollar bill Duplessis would adjust his style to the social condition of his sitter: his portrait of Charles-Claude, comte d'Angiviller, director of the Bâtiments du Roi, is as distant and conventional as his state portrait of Louis XVI in coronation robes (1776), while his realistic and intimate portrait of the opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) catches the composer at the keyboard in a moment of inspiration and his penetrating portrait of the sculptor Christophe Gabriel Allegrain (Louvre Museum, illustration) shows him having just laid down his chisel: this was the morceau de reception that gained him admittance to the Académie. His portrait of Benjamin Franklin (circa 1785), more than any other, has fixed the image of Franklin for posterity since it is reproduced on the U.S. hundred dollar bill. His portrait of the financier Jacques Necker hung at Voltaire's Coppet Castle. Several reduced versions were made, one of which is at the Louvre. Many of his portraits received a wider circulation as engravings.
Gallery
Gallery
• Illustration — Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain, 1774 • Illustration — Portrait of Christoph Willibald Gluck, 1775 • Illustration — Portrait of Louis XVI, 1776 • Illustration — Portrait of the Comte d'Angiviller, 1779 • Illustration — Monsieur de Buissy, 1780 • Illustration — Jacques Necker, c. 1781 • Illustration — Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, 1780s • Illustration — Portrait of Joseph-Marie Vien, 1784 • Illustration — Benjamin Franklin, ca. 1785 • Illustration — Princess of Lamballe • Illustration — Marie-Antoinette, 1771
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1725
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis was born in 1725 at Carpentras.
1802
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis died in 1802 at Versailles.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Carpentras.
Birth place
Versailles.
Death place
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q2286906: Joseph-Siffred DuplessisWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolved
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
Open the remaining particulars
The authorities additionally record the headings Joseph Siffrède Duplessis, Joseph Siffred Duplessis, Joseph Silfrède Duplessis, Joseph Sifrede Duplessis and Joseph-Siffrède Duplessis. His recorded language was French. Formation and teaching. He trained under Pierre Subleyras. Each of those relationships is stated by the authority record rather than inferred from style. Duplessis worked in painting. Recorded position is court painter. He belonged to Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He worked at Rome, Carpentras, Paris and Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.
Identity and origins
Career and activity
Recognition and collections
Work by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis is
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Nationalmuseum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Paintings
18,717 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Joseph-Laurent MalaineArtist
- Joseph-Marius CabassonArtist
- Joseph-Nicolas Robert-FleuryArtist
- Joseph-Noël SylvestreArtist
- Josepha Petrick KemarreArtist
- Josephin SoularyArtist
- Josephine CrawfordArtist
- Josephine CreaseArtist
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.