Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Jean-François Gilibert, France
Mme Montet-Noganets, Montauban
Private Collection, France
Sale: Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris, 5th November 1993, lot 15
Purchased at the above sale by the late owner

Montauban, Hôtel de Ville, Exposition des Beaux-Arts, 1862, no. 567

Montauban, Exposition des Beaux-Arts, 1877, no. 376

Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin & Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Linie, Licht und Schatten. Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, no. 67, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection,1999, no. 79, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Miradas sin Tiempo. Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Coleccion Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, no. 93, illustrated in colour in the catalogue 

Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Das Ewige Auge - Von Rembrandt bis Picasso. Meisterwerke der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2007, no. 78, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Henry Lapauze, Jean Briant paysagiste (1760-1799), maître de Ingres, et le paysage dans l'œuvre de Ingres, Paris, 1911, p. 50

Marie-Jeanne Ternois, 'Les Œuvres d'Ingres dans la Collection Gilibert', in La Revue des Arts, Paris, 1959, illustrated p. 125

Hans Naef, Ingres-Rom, Zürich, 1962, no. 129, pp. 141-42

Hans Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.A.D. Ingres, Bern, 1977-1980, vol. III, p. 56

Hinged at the four corners. Overall in good condition. A tiny tear, less than a cm in length, towards the lower left margin, barely visible. At the top right and lower right corner there are very faint grey stains from where the sheet was previously glued down. Very mild, barely visible, foxing at the upper section of the sheet and some slight surface dirt. Black chalk in very good condition, overall the drawing is fresh and strong. Sold mounted and framed in a modern, wooden and gilded frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

When, five years after his victory in the 1801 Prix de Rome, Ingres finally took up his place at the French academy in Rome, the role and status of landscape was in a state of rapid change.  In accordance with the traditional hierarchy of genres, pure landscape was not something that an artist trained within the French Academic system took very seriously, but all the same from the early 17^th century on, many highly acclaimed artists such as Claude and Poussin had worked very hard in their paintings to create beautiful, evocative landscape settings for their religious, mythological or historical subjects, and to that end had made many wonderful landscape drawings.  This, together with the topographical instinct of any artist visiting an exciting, new place to record what they see in drawings, was the basis for a great corpus of 17^th and 18^th-century drawings of Italian views, made by visiting artists from northern countries – not just France, but also the Netherlands, Germany and England. 

Many of the portrait drawings that Ingres made following his arrival in Rome in 1806 include a clearly topographical Roman background – a geographical point of reference that was clearly central to the appeal of Ingres’ Roman period portrait drawings to his patrons, many of whom were English or French visitors to the Eternal City.  Yet despite the clear importance of Roman landscape motifs in the portraits from which he made much of his living during these years, Ingres made relatively few landscape drawings or paintings, and virtually all those that are known date from the earlier years of his first stay in Rome, circa 1806-1820.  Three landscape paintings by the artist survive, and a number of drawings, almost all of them now in the Musée Ingres, Montauban.  The precise number of surviving landscape drawings by Ingres is, however, a matter of some debate. Hans Naef published some 140 as autograph in his pioneering 1962 study of Ingres’s Roman views, but the attribution of many of those drawings has since been questioned, and more recent scholars consider only some 90 sketches to be autograph (see G. Vigne, Le retour à Rome de Monsieur Ingres. Dessins et peintures, exh. cat., Rome/Paris 1993-4, pp. 348-65).   

The Krugier-Poniatowski drawing is one of very few landscape drawings by the artist that are not in the museum in Montauban.  It was owned by the artist’s childhood friend, Jean-François Gilibert, to whom Ingres seems to have sent it from Florence in 1821, and was still in the hands of Gilibert’s descendants in 1967.  Another drawing of Tivoli, which was also given by Ingres to Gilibert but made its way back to the group of works destined for the museum in Montauban, bears the date 1814, and has been cited by Naef (Ingres. Rom, 1962, pp. 140-42) in support of a similar dating for the present work.  That drawing is, however, rather different in technique to this, and is not accepted by Vigne as an autograph work by Ingres.  All the same, Naef’s suggestion that the Krugier-Poniatowski drawing should be dated circa 1814 seems convincing.

The picturesque potential of Tivoli, located just outside Rome, has always been abundantly clear to the many artists, both Italian and foreign, who have worked in Rome over the centuries.  With its unique combination of dramatic natural setting, atop cliffs and waterfalls, and fine ancient buildings and ruins, Tivoli is understandably one of the most frequently depicted locations in Italy.  Another superb drawn view of Tivoli, by Géricault, is also in the Krugier-Poniatowski collection (lot 5 in the sale on 5th February).