Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Mr & Mme Stanislas Maizony de Lauréal, Paris
Alexandre Maizony de Lauréal (acquired by descent from the above in 1877) 
Mme Emile Boismard, née Marie-Antoinette-Marguerite Maizony de Lauréal (by descent from the above)
René Boismard (by descent from the above)
Mme Alain Tassel, née Marie-Hélène Boismard (by descent from the above)
Private Collection, Paris
Sale: Paris, Audap-Solanay, 14th June 1991, lot 12 (as Portrait of Madame Adèle Maizony de Lauréal)
Acquired by the late owner in April 1997

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. 66, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Miradas sin Tiempo. Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Coleccion Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, no. 92, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Vienna, Albertina Museum, Goya bis Picasso. Meisterwerke der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2005, no. 9, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Hans Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.A.D. Ingres, Bern, 1977, vol. I, Chapter 39, p. 354ff, illustrated pl. 12; Chapter 40, pp. 358-369; vol. IV, no. 102, p. 188, illustrated p. 189 (as Mme Stanislas Maizony de Lauréal)
Georges Vigne, Le retour à Rome de Monsieur Ingres. Dessins et peintures, exhibition catalogue, Villa Médicis, Rome; Espace Electra, Paris, 1993-1994, no. 57 (identifed for the first time as a portrait of Madeleine Chapelle)
Georges Vigne, Dessins d'Ingres. Catalogue raisonné des dessins du Musée de Montauban, Paris, 1995, pp. 484-5, illustrated p. 485
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

Laid down on a modern board, non-acidic. Overall in good condition. Slight surface dirt at edges. Long inscription along the lower margin on the right side in pencil, barely visible. A chalk line around the right and lower margin. Sold in a carved 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."

In his earlier life, Ingres was not particularly fortunate in love, but in 1813, some seven years after he arrived in Rome and seemingly against all the odds, his luck dramatically turned.  He had not long since made the acquaintance of a French couple by the name of Jean-François and Adèle Maizony de Lauréal, who had just settled in Rome, where the young Frenchman had been posted as secretary of the French tribunal.  It seems that Ingres soon fell deeply in love with Madame Maizony de Lauréal, and that in order to deflect his affections, the lady suggested that he make contact with her cousin, Madeleine Chapelle, who resembled her very closely in appearance, but was unattached. 

On 7th August 1813, after his friends had sounded out their cousin back in France with encouraging results, the painter duly wrote a long letter to Mademoiselle Chapelle, in which he rather charmingly sketched his character in words, and described his various qualities and shortcomings.  He concluded: “Please do not be put off by all these imperfections; I hope that you will make them all dissipate by bringing with you everything that makes for an excellent wife, as I believe you are.  If so, you will complete my happiness.”  (H. Lapauze, Le Roman d’amour de M. Ingres, Paris 1910, pp. 251-52.)  Clearly, she was not put off, either by his candid self-analysis, or by the “sketch of my small physique” that the artist included with his letter, and less than six weeks later, Madeleine arrived in Rome.  On 4th December they were married, in San Miniato al Monte, and thus began a thirty-six year marriage of the greatest happiness, marred only by the fact that they both wished for children, but Madeleine’s only pregnancy, in 1814, ended in still-birth. 

Through the course of their long marriage, Ingres drew and painted his much-loved wife with some frequency: in addition to the substantial painted portrait in the Bührle Collection (fig.1), and some eleven other drawings, he also used her as the model for figures in a number of his most important paintings.  In a particularly beautiful drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Madeleine is, for example, cast in the role of La Fornarina, the drawing serving as a preparatory study for Ingres’ great 1814 painting, Raphael and the Fornarina, now in the Fogg Art Museum.  The present drawing, which is dated 1813 and may therefore have been made even before their marriage, seems to be the first of all the many images of Madame Ingres that have survived.  When it appeared on the market in 1991, the sitter was misidentified as Madeleine’s doppelganger cousin, Adèle Maizony de Lauréal, a confusion compounded by a misleading inscription on an autograph partial replica of the drawing, now in the Musée Ingres, Montauban.  In Georges Vigne’s catalogue of the Montauban drawings (see literature) the record is, however, set straight.

The other portrait drawings of Madeleine span a period of nearly three decades.  Particularly notable among the other early examples are two sheets in the collection at Montauban, one a sketch of Madeleine apparently dressed for her wedding, the other showing her pregnant, and therefore dating from the following year.  Also datable to around 1814 are two more portraits, in the Louvre and in a Paris private collection, and others, dating between the 1820s and 1841, are in Montauban, the Louvre, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the museum in Madeleine’s native town of Guéret, and various private collections (Naef nos. 97, 127, 128, 283, 324, 327, 328, 363, 378).   But it is in two particularly personal drawings, one (Naef 283) showing her concentrating hard on embroidery, the other (Naef 328, fig. 2), dated 1830, showing her smiling serenely, with Ingres himself peering out over her shoulder, that we see the clearest representations of his deep and lasting love for his wife – love that was only in its infancy in this very first of all Ingres’ portraits of Madeleine.