* Atala Varcollier, née Stamaty Paris1803 - 1885

The present painting repeats in composition, with some differences, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' Self portrait, age 24 painted in 1804 now in the Musée Condé, Chantilly.  There is some speculation that the Chantilly portrait was transformed by Ingres in 1850.  According to Delaborde, a friend of Ingres (and the first historian to catalogue  this work in 1870), "deux reproductions de ce portrait, exécutées par deux élèves du maître et retouchées par celui-ci dans les dernières années de sa vie, appartiennent à madame Ingres [two reproductions of this portrait, executed by two of the master's students and retouched by the master himself in the last years of his life, belonging to madame Ingres] "(see Delaborde Literature below, p.271).

The first – attributed to Mrs Gustave Hequet, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see the catalogue of the exhibition Portraits by Ingres, Literature below, n°147). The second is possibly the present picture (same catalogue, p.458, n°147, note 18), in which the pose varies from that in the Chantilly portrait (the right arm holding the pencil is higher and the stretcher can be seen completely). These works, which reproduce elements of both the original and the revised self-portraits were executed under Ingres’ supervision between 1850 and 1860.

Atala Varcollier was the daughter of Constantin Stamaty, a Greek from Constantinople, who became vice-consul of France in Civitevecchia. She was also the goddaughter of Chateaubriand and was named after the heroine in his famous novel Atala.

While in Italy, she married Michel-Augustin Varcollier (1795-1882) and the couple became close friends of Ingres. Atala is recorded as his most talented pupil in Rome and is known to have copied many of his works.

On July 24 1865, Ingres wrote to Atala’s husband in order to acquire "la belle copie qu’elle a fait de mon portrait afin de la laisser à ma ville natale" (see H.Naef, Literature below, t.II, p.248).