Ingres & fashion

Ingres and fashion promised an overview of the evolution of dress in the first half of the nineteenth century. The artist’s well-known interest in the meticulous, if not obsessive, rendering of clothes and accessories suggested a comprehensive presentation of this period of profound change. The exhibition at the Musée Ingres Bourdelle proves far broader in scope. While everything is accounted for, from the slender, column-like silhouettes of the early nineteenth century to the imposing crinolines of the Second Empire, the display is thematic, leaving visitors to trace the development of fashion through seven sections that also examine the artist’s training, working methods and technique through his treatment of clothing. This ambitious undertaking is the result of extensive preparatory research by the curators Florence Viguier, director of the Montauban museum, and Alexandra Bosc, deputy director of collections and research at Paris Musées.

The substantial catalogue published to accompany the exhibition appears to be the first major study devoted specifically to Ingres’s relationship with fashion, bringing together research, some previously unpublished, by specialists including curators, academics, an archivist and a costume designer. Whereas the major exhibition Portraits by Ingres. Images of an Epoch, shown in London, Washington and New York in 1999, and Aileen Ribeiro’s accompanying monograph, Ingres in Fashion. Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres’s Images of Women, confined themselves to portraits and strictly…