Portrait of Monsieur Bertin
It depicts Louis-François Bertin (1766–1841), the French writer, art collector and director of the pro-royalist Journal des débats.
He sits in three-quarter profile against a brown ground lit from the right, his fingers are pronounced and highly detailed, while the polish of his chair reflects light from an unseen window.
It is an unflinchingly realistic depiction of ageing and emphasises the furrowed skin and thinning hair of an overweight man who yet maintains his resolve and determination.
It was praised at the Paris Salon of 1833, and has been influential to both academic painters such as Léon Bonnat and later modernists including Pablo Picasso and Félix Vallotton.
He was a director of the Le Moniteur Universel until 1823 when the Journal des débats became the recognised voice of the liberal-constitutional opposition after he had come to criticize absolutism.
[2] The final painting was completed during a month at Bertin's estate of retreat, Le Château des Roches, in Bièvres, Essonne.
Ingres made daily visits while Bertin entertained guests such as Victor Hugo, his mistress Juliette Drouet, Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt and Charles Gounod.
[5] Ingres later made drawings of the Bertin family, including a depiction of his host's wife and their son Armand and daughter-in-law, Cécile.
[7] Romantic painting was freer and more expressive, preoccupied more with colour than with line or form, and more focused on style than on subject matter.
Paintings based on classical themes fell out of fashion, replaced by contemporary rather than historical subject matter, especially in portraiture.
The sitter for his 1848 Portrait of Baronne de Rothschild looks out at the viewer with the same directness as Bertin, but is softened by her attractive dress and relaxed pose; she is engaging and sympathetic rather than tough and imposing.
[16] Ingres struggled with the sketch; the head is on a square of attached paper which must have replaced an earlier version that was cut out, and other areas have been rubbed over and heavily reworked.
The artist becomes the cool, detached observer; Bertin, usually calm and reasoned, is now restless and impatient, mirroring Ingres' irritation at spending time on portraiture.
His coiled, stubby fingers rest on his thighs, barely protruding from the sleeves of his jacket, while his neck cannot be seen above his narrow starched white collar.
In the later painting, David shows tiny glints of light reflecting on the sitter's chair and painstakingly details "every wayward curl of [Sieyès'] closely cropped auburn hair.
His eyes are heavily lidded, circled by oppositely positioned twists of his white collar, the winds of his hair, eyebrows and eyelids.
Art historians Paul Mitchell and Lynn Roberts note that the design follows an old French tradition of placing austere male portraits within "exuberantly carved" frames.
[40] Bertin's wife Louis-Marie reportedly did not like the painting; his daughter, Louise, thought it transformed her father from a "great lord" to a "fat farmer".
A number of writers mentioned Bertin's eventful career, in tones that were, according to art historian Andrew Carrington Shelton, either "bitingly sarcastic [or] fawningly reverential".
Aware of Bertin's support of the July Monarchy, writers at the La Gazette de France viewed the portrait as the epitome of the "opportunism and cynicism" of the new regime.
Twentieth-century art historian Albert Boime described them as "powerful, vulturine ... grasping his thighs in a gesture ... projecting ... enormous strength controlled".
"[43] Bertin's hands made a different impression on the critic F. de Lagenevais, who remarked: "A mediocre artist would have modified them, he would have replaced those swollen joints with the cylindrical fingers of the first handy model; but by this single alteration he would have changed the expression of the whole personality ... the energetic and mighty nature".
[44] She notes that there is a certain amount of projection of the artist's personality and recalls Théophile Silvestre's description of Ingres; "There he was squarely seated in an armchair, motionless as an Egyptian god carved of granite, his hands stretched wide over parallel knees, his torso stiff, his head haughty".
Denner, in the words of Ingres scholar Robert Rosenblum, "specialised in recording every last line on the faces of aged men and women, and even reflections of windows in their eyes.
He showed his ambitious history painting The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian at the 1834 Salon, but it was harshly criticised; even Ingres' admirers offered only faint praise.
[45] Offended and frustrated, Ingres declared he would disown the Salon, abandon his residence in Paris for Rome, and relinquish all current positions, ending his role in public life.
[47] Stein does not possess Bertin's ironic stare, but is similarly dressed in black, and leans forward in an imposing manner, the painting emphasising her "massive, monumental presence".
[49] In 1907 the Swiss artist Félix Vallotton depicted Stein, in response to Picasso, making an even more direct reference to Ingres' portrait,[47] prompting Édouard Vuillard to exclaim, "That's Madame Bertin!
[51] In 1975 Marcel Broodthaers produced a series of nine black and white photographs on board based on Ingres' portraits of Bertin and Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière.
