Portrait of Madame Marcotte de Sainte-Marie

Ingres had just come back to Paris in the 1820s after 18 years in Italy, and he was short of money. He thought of himself as a painter of grand history pictures and treated portrait commissions as a chore that paid the rent, yet they are much of what we now prize him for. This is one of the first he made on his return, in 1826, of Suzanne Marcotte, wife of a friend from a family that stood by him for years. She sits in black, one hand pressed to her waist, her face turned with that cool, polished Ingres finish. He showed it at the Salon of 1827, the same show where he unveiled his huge Apotheosis of Homer.