Comtesse d'Haussonville

Ingres started this portrait in 1842 and did not finish it until 1845, and it nearly broke him. He was in his sixties, the acknowledged leader of the French classical school, and yet he made roughly 80 preparatory drawings just to settle how one woman should stand. During those three years the sitter, Louise, Comtesse d'Haussonville, had her first child, which pushed the work back further. She was no ordinary aristocrat. Born into the powerful Broglie family, she wrote books of her own, including lives of Byron and the Irish rebel Robert Emmet, and she had a reputation for being outspoken and liberal for her class. Ingres poses her leaning on a mantel, as if she has just come in from the opera. Her yellow shawl is thrown over the chair, her opera glasses lie on the mantel, and her reflection sits in the mirror behind her. Helen Clay Frick bought it shortly before the Frick Collection opened to the public in 1935.