Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Sold by Ingres to Haro, October 13th 1866

Ingres Sale, May 6th-7th 1867, lot 11

Countess David of Fitz James sale, December 15th-18th 1908, lot 19 (bt. Degas)

Degas sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, March 26th-27th 1918, lot 61, as Variante d'une parite du tableau du musée d'Aix (sold for 5,300 FF)

Collections: Axel Ullern; Chapman

Stanley Moss & Co., New York, c. 1967

Henry Lapauze, Ingres, sa vie & son oeuvre, Paris, Georges Petit, 1911, p. 552, no. 7

Georges Wildenstein, Ingres, London, Phaidon Press, 1956, p. 174, no. 75, illustrated

Ettore Camesasca, L’opera completa di Ingres, Milan, Rizzoli, 1968, p. 93, no. 66c illustrated

Patricia Condon, In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of J.-A.-D. Ingres, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY, 1983, p. 242

Georges Vigne, Ingres, New York, Abbeville Press, 1995, p. 333

This study, conceived in Italy during Ingres’ formative Prix-de-Rome scholarship, was part of the artist’s exhaustive preparation for his masterwork Jupiter and Thetis (1811). Widely considered one of his best renditions of classical subjects, that painting now hangs in the Musee Granet in Aix-en Provence. Ingres envisioned it as a “divine painting”, that with deft composition and emotional intensity would quiet even “mad dogs”. The artist’s interpretation of the massive Jupiter remains an image of male power par excellence. The brooding frontal portrait starkly contrasts the imploring acquiescence of ''one of literature’s most jealous wives''.

While Ingres ultimately chose the impassive frontal pose for the final work, Head of Jupiter in Profile offers a more nuanced, psychologically enigmatic interpretation of Jupiter as presented by the young master. A strong connection exists between this portrait and the artist's other seminal classically-themed work of this period, Oedipus and the Sphinx. In both, an impression of stoic wisdom is favored over brutal power found in the final Jupiter and Thetis. The mystery of Jupiter’s emotions in the profile study is heightened by the figure’s startling Caravaggesque lighting and the muted cold hue of the background.

The evolution of Jupiter and Thetis in Ingres’ studies on paper further point to an apparent conflict within the artist: to focus on Jupiter’s intellectual complexity over raw emotional power. An early sketch with Jupiter thrusting his arm upward was later revised to have his forehead rest pensively on his right hand. He again altered the arm in the final painting, having it passively rest on a cloud. The attention Ingres lavished on “perfecting” Jupiter’s difficult frontal pose indirectly highlights the simple effectiveness of presenting the god in meditative profile.

Stylistically, this portrait appears indebted to Flaxman’s celebrated illustrations for The Iliad. A life-long admirer of Flaxman’s work, Ingres undoubtedly looked to his style when working on mythological subjects. Flaxman’s line drawings were inspired by Greek vase painting, and in this way Ingres' Head of Jupiter in Profile reaches back to classicism in both style and subject. In fact, throughout his career Ingres almost invariably reserved the stark profile for classical themes and statuesque nude studies.

Ingres’ preference for the solitary portrait as opposed to the overall theme is best described in his own words; “It is a mistake to search too hard for the subjects… they must be sacrificed to the essential, and the essential is the contour, the modeling of the figures”.

Edgar Degas voraciously collected works of art by Ingres eventually owning over twenty of his paintings and ninety of his drawings. The present lot was sold in the Degas sale with other paintings by Ingres, including head studies for Victor from The Apotheosis of Homer, Oedipus and figures from Ingres' Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien.

The present lot once belonged to Edgar Degas, whose collection of works by Ingres included over twenty paintings and ninety drawings; an appropriate pairing of the two most important draughtsmen of the 19th century.