Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres

Possibly, Francis Petit collection, Paris
Collection of Walt Kuhn, New York
Private Collection, New York
Salander O'Reilly, New York
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Possibly, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1855, no. 3375

Possibly, Comte Henri Delaborde, Ingres, sa vie et ses travaux, sa doctrine, d'après les notes manuscrites et les lettres du maître, Paris, 1840
Possibly, Georges Wildenstein, Ingres, London, 1954, p 191
Possibly, Patricia Condon witth Marjorie B. Cohn and Agnes Mongan, In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of J.-A.-D. Ingres, exh. cat., Indiana, 1983, p. 241

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has been lined, cleaned and retouched. The varnish is slightly uneven and could be corrected. No restorations are visible under ultraviolet light however with the naked eye one can see that slight thinness in the hair on the left side of the head may have received some retouches and there may be some restorations in a few spots elsewhere. However, the painting is in very good state and although improving the varnish would be necessary, cleaning the painting is not.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Ingres' working methods are well documented and many of his students have attested to the laborious process that he undertook to arrive at a finished composition. Added testament is given by his many preparatory drawings and sketches: studies for individual elements such as hands, feet, faces and drapery that were roughed out and, on occasion, painted to a highly finished state. Ingres' studio habits were economical and he carefully preserved any scrap of paper or canvas on which an image was painted and sometimes unrelated figures may be found on the same support (for another example, see fig. 2). While many of these have survived, several have been scattered while others have been thought to be lost, only to be later correctly identified.  

It is clear that this is a study related to Jésus remet à Saint Pierre les clefs du paradis (fig. 1), an early masterpiece that was commissioned for the Church of San Trinita dei Monti, Rome, in 1817. In a letter from Hans Naef on the subject of this painting, dating from 1990, he writes that at this time, the very beginning of his career, Ingres would not have employed a studio or any assistants and this commission would have been a major focus through to its completion in 1820. The theme for this commission is taken from the New Testament (Matthew 16:15). "At Caesarea, it was Peter [the apostle] who answered Christ's question, "...whom say ye that I am,' by giving the great declaration, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,' to which Jesus replied, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

This scene has provided inspiration for countless masterpieces, and Ingres must have been familiar with Poussin's Ordination (circa 1640) and Perugino's The Delivery of the Keys, in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, (1481-2). Unlike Perugino and Poussin, who depicted all twelve apostles, Ingres initially chose to illustrate only six, one of whom is cropped and only partially visible on the extreme right of the canvas. Two more were added on the far right as Ingres reworked the composition in 1841, when the Dames de Sacre-Coeur exchanged this work with the French government for a copy.  This current complete version of Jésus remet à Saint Pierre les clefs du paradis is currently on loan from the Louvre to the Musée Ingres in Montauban. The Musée Ingres owns seventy one drawings and tracings related to the painting, and there are seven documented oil sketches of heads and hands related to it. These oil sketches are listed in Georges Wildenstein's Ingres as: Head of Christ (no. 134), The Hands of Christ (no. 135), Two Studies for the Left Foot of Christ (no. 136, whereabouts unknown), Head of Saint John (no. 137, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Head of Saint Matthew (no. 138, Musée du Louvre), Head of Saint Paul (no. 139, whereabouts unknown), and the Head of Saint Philip (no. 140, whereabouts unknown), possibly the present lot (Wildenstein, 1954, pp. 190-1). There is also a small oil sketch of the complete composition.

In our sketch, Ingres has painted the head of a man, the hands of Saint John, and the chin and mouth of a cowled monk. The positioning and likeness of the model and the implication of the horizon line and distant mountains to the left of his face clearly suggest that this is a study for the figure of the apostle standing behind Christ to the viewer's right in the final composition (fig. 1). It could very well be Saint Philip, who is described as elderly and bearded, and consistently referred to as the fifth apostle. In another depiction by Ingres, Saint Philip the Apostle, also held in the Louvre, he is similarly posed with one palm facing outward in prayer. In his correspondence, Hans Naef also confirms that the hands in our study (re-oriented in fig. 3), positioned perpendicular to the face, are an exact match of St. John's. The graphic stroke of brilliant red alludes to the sleeve of his red robe in the finished composition. While the monk has no obvious counterpart in the finished work, it is likely that Ingres had considered adding other figures, or dressing existing ones differently, while the painting was in progress.

This study was in the collection of the American artist, Walt Kuhn, and was left in his studio and the evidence of Ingres' process would have been of great interest to Kuhn as a fellow portraitist. The relationship between head, hands and the cowled figure seems to be entirely arbitrary and it is probably that the cut and recomposed sketches (such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Head of Saint John and the Louvre's Saint Mathew) were made from such groups of otherwise unconnected sketches. The result is immediately engaging and provides us with a new insight into the work of this extraordinary genius.