Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

The sitter in this handsome portrait was identified by an inscription on the old frame (now lost) as la Marquise de Beaumont, signifying Anne Armande Antoinette Hue de Miromesnil (1766-1830), wife of the Marquis André de Beaumont (1761-1838), who inherited the title from his father, Anne-Claude de Beaumont. 

The portrait has much in common with others realised by Ingres at this time, for example, those of Madame Jean-Baptiste Lepère (Paris, Louvre) again dated 1830, Madame Chantal Marcotte (Private Collection), dated 1834¹, and Madame Godinot (1829), her hair similarly dressed, also in private collection.²

In the present work, the Marquise is dressed with great care and in a fashionable manner, with puffed sleeves and a frilly indoor day cap and bonnet. The belt and hat are of a similar design to those depicted in the portrait of Madame Ingres in the Musée Ingres, Montauban, dated 1835.³  

By 1826, the high-waisted Empire dress, remarkable for its simplicity, had disappeared, giving way to a fashion that clearly did not spare on details, all of which Ingres records here with lucidity and clarity. 

As with many of Ingres’ portrait drawings, it is the face which is the true focus of his attention; here the folds, pleats and tucks of the Marquise’s voluminous dress are described rapidly in long, curving lines while her elaborately curled hair and fine features are defined with subtle and precise modelling, the expression – a slight smile and thoughtful eyes - defined with great sensitivity. The hands, though only cursorily sketched, are conveyed with subtlety and elegance. This contrasting approach results in the extraordinary and stimulating quality of these portraits, where the lack of finish in the modelling of the figures leaves everything to the weight of the lines, enhancing the refined modelling of the faces, their characters and subtle introspections.

These years were significant for being a period in which Ingres’s reputation for portraiture was particularly high; the portraits he exhibited at the Salon were generally very well received, although sometimes at the same time controversial.⁴ Ironic though it may seem, given the esteem in which Ingres’ portraits are held today, he actually gave little importance to this form of artistic expression, considered portraiture little more than a means of earning a living during difficult times. He had first made portraits when in Rome, producing the most exquisite drawn portraits of fellow visitors to Rome that afforded him a certain financial security, especially after the fall of the Napoleonic government when he could not count on French patronage. But though these portrait drawings were only ever made in order to put bread on the table, they are now among his most loved works, and in the words of Hans Naef, ‘one of the most glorious chapters in his career.’⁵

1. H. Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, vol. V, Bern 1977, cat. 337, 348, reproduced figs. 337, 348 

2. Portraits by Ingres, Image of an Epoch, exh. cat., London and New York, 1999-2000, p. 314, cat. 106, reproduced  

3. Naef, op. cit., cat 363, reproduced fig. 363  

4. For example his 1832 portrait of Louis-François Bertin, now in the Louvre, greatly affected people with its realism but numerous critics deplored it. See Portraits by Ingres, exh. cat., op. cit., pp. 300-307, no. 99, reproduced 

5. H. Naef, ‘Ingres' Portrait Drawings of English Sitters in Rome,’ The Burlington Magazine, vol. 98, no. 645 (December 1956), p. 427