imported>Pbrenjam: Year of acquisition. Christopher Riopelle(ntl gallery curator) indicated in talk in 2019 that it was the "first great acquisition after the war" in 1946.

2025-03-22T20:58:27Z

Year of acquisition. Christopher Riopelle(ntl gallery curator) indicated in talk in 2019 that it was the "first great acquisition after the war" in 1946.

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{{Short description|Painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres}}
{{Infobox artwork
| image_file=Dominique Ingres - Mme Moitessier.jpg
| image_size=300px
| title=Madame Moitessier
| artist=[[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]
| year=1856
| medium=[[Oil on canvas]]
| height_metric=121.3
| width_metric=90.9
| metric_unit=cm
| imperial_unit=in
| museum=[[National Gallery]]
| city=[[London]]
}}

'''''Madame Moitessier''''' is a portrait of Marie-Clotilde-Inès Moitessier (née de Foucauld) begun in 1844 and completed in 1856 by [[Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]. The portrait, which depicts Madame Moitessier seated, is now in the collection of the [[National Gallery]] in [[London]], which acquired it in 1946.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-auguste-dominique-ingres-madame-moitessier National Gallery: Catalogue Entry]</ref>

''Madame Moitessier'' is also the title of a second portrait by Ingres, which depicts her standing; it was painted in 1851 and is now in the collection of the [[National Gallery of Art]], [[Washington, D.C.]]

==Subject==
[[File:Moitessier (Ingres, 1851) NGA.jpg|thumb|200px|right|1851 standing portrait ([[National Gallery of Art]], [[Washington, D.C.]])]]
Marie-Clotilde-Inès de Foucauld (1821–1897) was the daughter of a French civil servant in the department of forests and waterways.<ref name="Tint426">Tinterow; Conisbee et al, 426</ref> In 1842 she married a widower twice her age, the rich banker and lace merchant Sigisbert Moitessier, thus becoming Madame Moitessier.<ref name="Tint426" /> In 1844 Ingres was approached by his longtime friend and former painting subject [[Portrait of Charles Marcotte|Charles Marcotte]], who was one of Sigisbert Moitessier's colleagues, with the idea of painting Madame Moitessier's portrait.<ref name="Tint426" />

Reluctant at this stage in his career to accept portrait commissions—he considered portraiture to be a lower form of art than [[history painting]]—he initially refused Marcotte's request.<ref name="Tint426"/> However, when Ingres met Madame Moitessier, he was struck by her beauty and agreed to produce a portrait.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o5vqAAAAMAAJ |page=377 |title=Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian |last=Eisler |first=Colin T. |year=1977 |volume=4|publisher=Phaidon Press for the Samuel H. Kress Foundation |isbn=9780714814537 }}</ref> Art critic [[Théophile Gautier]], who watched during some of the painting sessions, agreed with Ingres, describing her beauty as the most regal, magnificent, stately and [[Juno (mythology)|Juno]]esque that he had ever seen drawn.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kiroff |year=2015 |first=Blagoy |title=Ingres: 162 Master Drawings |isbn=9786050378276 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RzgqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT107 |page=107|publisher=Blagoy Kiroff }}</ref>

==Two portraits==
He began work on the seated version, depicting the subject in a floral dress. Work on the commission proceeded slowly. The painting was originally to include the Moitessiers' daughter, Catherine; Ingres, finding little Catherine "impossible", eliminated her from the composition sometime around 1847.<ref>Tinterow; Conisbee et al., 431</ref> Work on the painting was suspended in 1849, when the death in June of Ingres' wife left him unable to work for several months, and Madame Moitessier was distracted by her second pregnancy and the death of her father.<ref>Tinterow; Conisbee et al., 433</ref> In June 1851, having been reminded by the woman he called "la belle et bonne" ("the beautiful and good") that her portrait had still not been completed, Ingres began afresh, painting the standing portrait of her in a dark dress, which he finished in December 1851.<ref name="Tint426" /> He then returned to the seated portrait, which he completed in 1856, twelve years after he started it.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MWjtopIjG20C&pg=PA30 |page=30 |title=Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History |last=Betzer |first=Sarah E. |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=9780271048758 |year=2012}}</ref>

Characteristically, Ingres found inspiration in the art of the past when painting ''Madame Moitessier''. The pose with a hand touching the cheek was taken from a fresco of [[Hercules]] and [[Telephus]] from [[Herculaneum]] that he may have seen in Naples in 1814,<ref>Ribeiro, 164</ref> and which was familiar to him through [[engraving]]s.<ref>Tinterow; Conisbee et al., 429</ref> According to the National Gallery, [[Titian]]'s ''[[La Schiavona]]'', also in the gallery, may have inspired the second profile view in the mirror.<ref>[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-auguste-dominique-ingres-madame-moitessier 1856 portrait National Gallery page]</ref> She is wearing a dress of fashionable and expensive [[Lyon's silk industry|Lyon silk]] printed with a floral pattern, which is echoed by the flowers and leaves of the gilt frame. A similar frame was used for Ingres's 1853 portrait of ''[[The Princesse de Broglie]]''.<ref>[https://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/the-art-of-the-picture-frame/artist-ingres Notes on frames in the exhibition, Portraits by Ingres], National Portrait Gallery, February 1999</ref>

<gallery widths="200px" heights="200px" perrow="3">
File:Arcadia, ercolano.jpg|Fresco of [[Hercules]] and [[Telephus]] from [[Herculaneum]], 1st century BC
File:Titian - Portrait of a Lady ('La Schiavona') - Google Art Project.jpg|Titian, ''[[La Schiavona]]'', 1510–12
File:Jean-auguste-dominique ingres, madame moitessier, 1856, 01.jpg|Madame Moitessier in context: The heavily decorated frame echoes the floral pattern of the sitter's dress
</gallery>

Numerous drawn studies for both portraits exist. A study on canvas for the seated portrait, in which the figure has been drawn by Ingres and the background painted by an assistant, is in the [[Musée Ingres]] in [[Montauban]].<ref>Tinterow; Conisbee et al., 439</ref>
{{Clear}}

==Legacy==

[[Pablo Picasso]] first encountered the painting at an exhibition in [[Paris]], in 1921. Over the next decade, he repeatedly referenced Ingres in his art, particularly in his homage in the painting ''Woman with a Book''. The model for ''Woman with a Book'', Picasso's then young mistress, [[Marie-Thérèse Walter]], mimics Madame Moitessier’s pose. The painting was completed in August 1932. The painting is currently held by the [[Norton Simon Museum]], in [[Pasadena, California|Pasadena]], [[California]], [[United States]].<ref>{{Cite news |title=Woman with a Book|website=Norton Simon Museum |url=https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/F.1969.38.10.P |accessdate=2022-10-07}}</ref>

The two paintings were exhibited together for the first time at a temporary exhibition organised in partnership with the [[Norton Simon Museum]], held at the [[National Gallery]] in [[London]], [[United Kingdom]] in 2022.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Picasso Ingres: Face to Face|website=National Gallery, London |url=https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/picasso-ingres-face-to-face |accessdate=2022-10-07}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[List of paintings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
*[[Aileen Ribeiro|Ribeiro, Aileen]] (1999). ''Ingres in Fashion: Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres's Images of Women''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. {{ISBN|0-300-07927-3}}
*Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip; Naef, Hans (1999). ''Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch''. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. {{ISBN|0-8109-6536-4}}

==External links==
{{commons category|Madame Moitessier (Ingres - National Gallery, London)}}
*[https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-auguste-dominique-ingres-madame-moitessier 1856 portrait (National Gallery site)]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20090115105120/http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?object=32696 1851 portrait (NGA site)]
*[http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=292 1851 portrait study at the J. Paul Getty Museum]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg-YRAlPmbs June 2019 talk given by Chris Riopelle on Ingres's Madame Moitessier]

{{Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres}}

[[Category:1856 paintings]]
[[Category:Paintings in the National Gallery, London]]
[[Category:Portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres]]
[[Category:19th-century portraits]]
[[Category:Portraits of women]]

Portrait of Madame Moitessier - Revision history

imported>Pbrenjam: Year of acquisition. Christopher Riopelle(ntl gallery curator) indicated in talk in 2019 that it was the "first great acquisition after the war" in 1946.