Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867)
Autoportrait à l’âge de 24 ans (Self-portrait at age 24)
1804
Oil on canvas, 77 x 63 cm
Musée Condé, Chantilly
An early work, painted in 1804, was exhibited in its initial state at the Salon of 1806 and violently criticized. In this first version of the painting, which we know from the Salon critics, from a copy made by Ingres‘ fiancée Julie Forestier in 1807 (Montauban, Ingres museum) and from a photograph by Marville (BNF) taken between 1841 and 1851, Ingres then wore a white-gray coat, and not brown as currently, held a white chalk in his right hand and with his raised left hand erased the sketch of the portrait of his friend Gillibert on the canvas. Hurt by the criticism, Ingres left to complete his training at the French Academy at the Villa Medici. But Ingres transformed his portrait throughout his life, reworking his composition by eliminating all superfluous details, emphasizing the face with its burning gaze by the light stain of the shirt, all the other tones forming only a brown monochromy. In La Presse on June 27, 1847, Théophile Gautier describes a character “with a fierce face, with sparkling eyes under their thick black eyebrows, with uncultivated and bushy hair, with a tawny complexion like the cuff of a boot”. Presented at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, the painting was very appreciated. (Musée Condé)