Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Charles Dupaty,
Madame Charles Dupaty,
Madame Aminthe Hecquet d'Orval, sister of the above;
Comte et Comtesse de Lipowski, by descent from the above until 1977;
British Rail Pension Fund,
sale, Sotheby's London, June 19, 1990, lot 9,
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

London, Covent Garden Gallery, Master Drawings Presented by Adolphe Stein, 1977, no. 53

P. A. Coupin, Notice nécrologique sur Charles Mercier Dupaty, Revue encyclopédique, Paris, February, 1826;
C. Blank, Ingres, Paris, 1870, p. 246;
H. Delaborde, Ingres, Paris, 1870, no. 291;
Catalogue par order chronologique des ouvrages de gravure et de sculpture de J. Edouard Gatteau, Paris, 1875, p. 12, the commemorative medal illus. pl. IV;
H. Lapauze, Les dessins de J.-A.-D. Ingres du Musée de Montauban, Paris, 1901, p. 265;
H. Naef, 'Eighteen Portrait Drawings by Ingres,' Master Drawings, vol. IV, 1966, p. 258;
Idem., 'The Sculptor Dupaty and the Painter Dejuinne: Two Unpublished Portraits by Ingres,' Master Drawings, vol. XIII, no. 3, 1975, pp. 261-66 and 272-73;
Idem, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, Bern, 1977, Vol. IV, no. 9, p. 112  

Paper a little yellowed, but medium good and fresh. Small cut in paper, centre right edge. Sold in a gilt wood frame.
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The neoclassical sculptor Charles Dupaty was, at least in the eyes of the great Ingres scholar Dr. Hans Naef, an artist whom “Nobody today seems to have a clear conception of”.¹ That he won the Prix de Rome in 1799 for his sculpture Périclès visitant Anaxagore, subsequently spending a number of years in Rome, from 1803 to 1810, and being made first a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1814, then two years later a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, would suggest that at the very least, art history has been rather cruel to his memory. However, what Dupaty may have lacked artistically, he seems to have more than made up for in social standing, with his family connections described by Naef as “highly imposing”.² It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that an aspiring and well-connected artist, such as Dupaty, whilst living and working in Rome, should have been portrayed by Ingres.

The present work, executed by Ingres in 1810, the year the sitter is thought to have left Rome to return to life in Paris, falls into a small series of arresting portrait drawings made by the artist between 1810 and 1812, in which the sitters are all presented in profile to the left. As Margaret Morgan Grasselli discusses in her catalogue entry for Ingres’ portrait of Philippe Mengin de Bionval, in which the sitter is similarly portrayed in profile to the left, “Ingres was interested, for that very limited period, in exploring the artistic possibilities and complexities of the profile,” though “For some reason he virtually abandoned profile portraits soon after.”³ Indeed only three later profile drawings are known, dating from 1814, 1816 and 1841, none of which convey the same level of intensity as those from 1810-12.

The portrait of Dupaty was, until 1977, only known through a lithograph by François-Louis Dejuinne, which, Naef surmises, was in all likelihood made after the sitter’s death in 1825 (fig. 1).⁴ The re-emergence of the drawing brings with it an exquisite example of the precision and subtlety that Ingres manages to imbue in many of his silvery black lead portraits. The extraordinary detail and modelling achieved by the artist in Dupaty’s face is produced through the most delicate touches of the medium, while Ingres uses far looser, more wavy strokes for his hair and broad confident strokes to indicate clothing.

^1. Naef, op. cit., 1975

^2. Ibid., p. 261

^3. In Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch, exhib. cat., London, National Gallery, et al., 1999-2000, no. 48, p. 176 

^4. Naef, op. cit., 1975, p. 266