Abstract
This contextual reading of Alexis Grimou’s portraits and fantasy figures of drinkers revises the artist’s posthumous reputation as an uncouth drunkard. Working for an elite clientele, the so-called French Rembrandt transformed the crude or moralistic tropes of Netherlandish painting into articulations of the emerging concept of aesthetic taste. The artist projected refined sociability in his self-portraits as a drinker and as Bacchus. Grimou’s personal connections with the drinks trade are evident in subtle visual promotion strategies. In Grimou’s portrait of the marquis d’Artaguiette, wine symbolizes success in metropolitan France but recalls harsher realities in the colony of Louisiana.
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