ピエール=フランソワ・ベルニエ

Ingres painted this at 20, near the very start of a career that would run more than 60 years. The sitter was a friend his own age, Pierre-François Bernier, a young astronomer, and the two had come up together around the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David, the reigning painter of the Revolution and the new republic. It is a plain, close likeness, David's cool clarity already in it. What neither man could know was how little time Bernier had. That same year he shipped out as astronomer on Baudin's great expedition to chart the coast of Australia, and in 1803, worn down by the voyage, he died at sea off the island of Timor, still in his early twenties. An island off Australia carries his name to this day.