Ingres. The artist and his princes

1. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d’Haussonville, 1845
Oil on canvas - 132 x 92.1 cm
New York, The Frick Collection
Photo: The Frick Collection

See the image in its page

We were thrilled with the visit. Reading the remarkable catalogue [1] completes our conviction: this Ingres exhibition at the Château de Chantilly is a great success. It presents the five paintings and the drawing by Ingres in the Musée Condé collection in a different way from the permanent display, allowing us to discover them in a new light and even - it has to be said, although we are in favour of the tight displays favoured by the Duc d’Aumale - to see them better. The exhibition’s design is also remarkable: in several chapters that correspond to focused exhibitions, it achieves the feat of having an overall coherence that makes it a genuine retrospective, covering virtually every stage of the painter’s career.

Let’s start at the end, with the high point of the exhibition: while we are delighted to see in France the sublime portrait of the Countess d’Haussonville (ill. 1), a work from the Frick Collection that can be loaned out as it is not part of the original donation, we have to admit that the link with the other sections is tenuous. The aim of the exhibition is to show Ingres’s relationship with the Orléans family. The Comte d’Haussonville was certainly an Orleanist, but so were most of the painter’s patrons during the July Monarchy. The pretext is a little flimsy, but the woman in blue overcomes any reservations: this is one of the painter’s most beautiful portraits, and therefore one of the most beautiful portraits of all time.

2. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Self-portrait at the Age of Twenty-Four, 1804-1850
Oil on canvas - 77 x 61 cm
Chantilly, Musée Condé
Photo: Musée Condé

See the image in its page

First masterpiece, first chapter: the Self-Portrait at the Age of Twenty-Four (ill. 2) had a complex conception that the catalogue and exhibition explore all the better because the latest analyses carried out by the C2RMF, reported in an essay by Bruno Mottin, put an end to the conjectures that have surrounded it.
Painted in 1804, it was exhibited at the Salon of 1806 and, like his other works, was very poorly received. People criticised "a swarthy head, black hair on a white canvas", the drapery over his shoulder which must "prodigiously hinder him in the heat of the composition", and they would have liked "a more elegant pose and better drapery". Ingres was so hurt by this that he wrote "I will no longer exhibit at the Salon as long as I have such judges".
He reworked his painting in 1850, transforming it significantly but without touching the face.

3. Julie Forestier (1782-1853)
after Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Self-portrait at the Age of Twenty-Four, 1807
Oil on canvas - 65 x 53 cm
Montauban, Musée Ingres
Photo:…