Artwork · 19th century · Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

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Madame Félix Gallois

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres1852Graphite with touches of gold in oil to highlight jewelry, on buff wove paper.34.6 × 26.8 cm

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At a glance

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A young woman with her hair parted in the middle rests her arm on a chair and looks at us with a small smile.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres drew her in graphite in 1852, when he was about seventy-two, adding touches of gold oil paint only to her jewelry.
Her face is drawn with great care and her dress with quick lines, so one sheet shows the pencil working at two speeds.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom in on the face. The pencil strokes blend so softly that you can hardly see them, and the cheeks and chin turn round. A tiny bright spot sits in each eye, so they catch the light. The corners of her mouth lift only a little.
Look at the brooch at her throat. Inside a penciled oval sit a few dabs of gold paint. In a drawing that is all gray, this gold is the first thing you notice. Ingres saved his color for the jewelry alone.
Now move down to her folded hands. There is a bracelet on each wrist and a ring on a finger, all touched with gold. The hands are smooth and rounded, while the lace and folds around them are drawn lightly.
Zoom in on the sleeve at the left. Here the lines are much faster and looser. A few zigzags become a lace ruffle, and a few slanting hatch marks become shadow. Compare it with the face, and you can see where the artist chose to spend his effort.
Zoom in on the writing in the lower left corner. After J. Ingres Del. it says, in French, to his dear cousin and friend Monsieur Gallois, and then 1852. Del. is short for a Latin word meaning drew this.

When it was painted

In 1852, past the age of seventy, Ingres became a bridegroom again. Three years earlier, in 1849, he had lost Madeleine, his wife of more than thirty-five years, and the grief hit him hard. His new wife, Delphine Ramel, was the niece of his old friend and patron Charles Marcotte.

The woman in this drawing is Delphine's cousin, Nathalie Gallois. Marrying Delphine gave Ingres a whole new set of relatives. According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, he made this portrait as a gift for Monsieur Gallois.

Ingres had learned this kind of drawing the hard way. He went to Rome in 1806, and after Napoleon's fall, when big commissions dried up, he supported himself by drawing pencil portraits of travelers passing through the city. Ingres always ranked history painting higher, but those years sharpened his skill at catching a face with nothing but a pencil.

By 1852 he was a grand old man of French art. He had served as director of the French Academy in Rome and had come home to Paris in 1841. A painted portrait could keep him busy for years. A pencil portrait was something he could give to the people close to him.

Ingres died in Paris in 1867, at the age of eighty-six. This sheet later belonged to the banker Robert Lehman and came to the Met with the Lehman Collection in 1975.

Now find the word cousin in the inscription at the lower left. It is a warm hello from an old painter to the new family he had just joined.

The painter

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

1780–1867

When painting this, the artist was about 72 years old

All paintings by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres →

More by the same painter

Joseph-Antoine Moltedo (born 1775)ca. 1810

Joséphine-Éléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn (1825–1860), Princesse de Broglie1851–53

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many places can you find where gold has been added to the drawing?
Why?Why do you think Ingres drew the face so carefully and the dress with just a few lines?
What about you?This portrait was a handmade gift for a relative. Now that we can send a photo in seconds, what does a gift that took real time to make mean to you?

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