Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Stephen Richard Currier & Audrey Bruce Currier, Harvard, MA (sale: Christie's, London, 3rd April 1984, lot 70)
Purchased at the above sale by the late owner 

Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen & Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Ingres und Delacroix: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1986, pl. 42, p. 258
New York, Jan Krugier Gallery, The Presence of Ingres, Important works by Ingres, Degas, Picasso, Matisse and Balthus, 1988, no. 25
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art & New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch, no. 100, illustrated in the catalogue

Daniel Ternois, Inventaire Général des Dessins des Musées de Provence, Les Dessins D'Ingres au Musée de Montauban, Les Portraits, vol. III, Paris, 1959, no. 14, illustrated
Hélène Toussaint, Les portraits d'Ingres, peintures des musées nationaux, Paris, 1985, no. XII 1, illustrated
Linie, Licht und Schatten, Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski (exhibition catalogue), Berlin, 1999, illustrated p. 407
The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection (exhibition catalogue), Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Venice, 1999, illustrated p. 406

The sheet has been window mounted to suit the size of Monsieur Bertin on the recto, however the sheet is in fact larger at the top and sides (this is visible on the verso). At the lower section of the recto the drawing seems to be lightly glued to the double sided mount. The paper appears to be thinner below the signature and this may be due to the paper being pulled off a previous mount. Chalk on recto and verso is in good condition. On the verso the lower edge appears to be partly glued to the mount and there are two paper hinges at the top. The drawing on the verso is quite strong and is slightly visible on the recto. Some surface dirt. Sold mounted and framed in a modern, wooden and gilded frame.
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On this remarkable, double-sided sheet, Ingres made studies for two different paintings which, though entirely unconnected, are each among the artist’s most celebrated works in their respective genres.  The extremely free, rapidly drawn portrait study on the recto appears to be the artist’s very first surviving thought for his 1832 portrait (fig. 1), now in the Louvre, of the famous (and famously massive) Louis-François Bertin (1766-1841).  On the other side of the sheet are three studies of legs relating to Ingres’ monumental painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien, commissioned for the cathedral of Autun in December 1824 and finally completed nearly ten years later, in 1834 (fig. 2).

Though its initial reception at the Salon of 1833 was not unanimously positive, Ingres’ portrait of Monsieur Bertin soon came to be widely recognised as a magnificent representation of a splendid figure, and the painting has continued to impress viewers ever since; Manet memorably described it as an image of “the Buddha of the bourgeoisie.”  Bertin was a significant and unusual political figure.  Initially, he had supported the Revolution, but became disillusioned after the massacres of 1792, and began working for the restoration of a constitutional monarchy – primarily through his influential publication, Journal des débats.  This activity resulted in a period of exile in Elba, and also in the confiscation of his newspaper – his livelihood – without which Bertin faced considerable financial difficulty.  During his last years, however, following the ascent to the throne in 1830 of the liberally-minded Louis-Philippe, Bertin enjoyed a much more secure and peaceful life.  

The immensely free handling in this dashing sketch, strikingly different from the technique that generally characterises Ingres’ portrait drawings, and the inscription along the bottom of the sheet (“M. Bertin l’ainé d’après nature”) both indicate that this drawing must represent the very first stage in Ingres’ development of his portrait of Bertin.  The evidence of this and a subsequent drawing, in the Musée Ingres, Montauban (Vigne 2610), indicates that the artist initially intended to show his subject standing, but the expressive limitations of that pose seem to have left him unsatisfied.  A famous story, which exists in at least two variations, relates that Ingres agonised over how he should pose his illustrious sitter to the point of breaking down in tears, but then by chance saw his subject seated in exactly the striking pose seen in the final painting, and begged him to come to the studio the next day and recreate the scene.  Whether or not there is any truth in this tale, it serves to highlight how immediate and spontaneous Monsieur Bertin’s pose appeared to Ingres’ audience.  A drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shows Bertin exactly as he appears in the painting, and is drawn with such energy that one can almost feel Ingres’ excitement at having finally arrived at this brilliant solution to his problem.  Further detail studies of the sitter’s hands and legs are in the Fogg Art Museum and at Montauban respectively (see The Portraits of Ingres, pp. 300-307).

At the same time as he was working on the portrait of Louis-François Bertin, Ingres was also inching his way towards the completion of The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien, so although it is in some ways unusual in Ingres work to find studies for totally unrelated works together on the same sheet, it is at least understandable in terms of chronology.  The three studies of a leg relate to the figure who crouches, stone in hand, just behind and to the right of St. Symphorien.  Fascinatingly, the study of Monsieur Bertin standing, in Montauban, also has on the reverse several studies for the leg and arm of the same crouching figure in The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien.   

After L’age d’Or (some 500 studies) and the Apotheosis of Homer (more than 300), it is for The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien that we have the greatest number of surviving drawings: some 200 at Montauban, and a quite a number more in other locations, not to mention the two very important canvases covered with figure studies in oil, in the Fogg Art Museum.  Ingres was first contacted about the commission in December 1824, but it was only in 1834 that the finished painting was ready to be exhibited at the Salon.  It has understandably been held up ever since as one of Ingres’ most magnificent and characteristic religious paintings.  It is, though, only through a sheet of rapid working studies such as this, which transports us back in time so we can look over the artist’s shoulder as he works, that we can really appreciate the thought, imagination and sheer hard work that Ingres put into developing these two definitive paintings.