Comtesse Charles d’Agoult (born Marie de Flavigny) and Her Daughter Claire d’Agoult
Medium
Graphite, heightened with white opaque watercolor, with touches of yellow watercolor, on off-white wove paper, lined to secondary wove paper
Dimensions
Primary support: 48.5 × 39.9 cm (19 1/8 × 15 3/4 in.); Secondary support: 49.9 × 41.5 cm (19 11/16 × 16 3/8 in.)
Classification
drawings (visual works)
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
244917
Art Historical Context
In the Prints and Drawings department of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ *Comtesse Charles d’Agoult (born Marie de Flavigny) and Her Daughter Claire d’Agoult* (1849) offers a poignant glimpse into mid-19th-century French society. Ingres, a leading Neoclassicist renowned for his meticulous draftsmanship, captures the noblewoman— a prominent salonnière and author—and her young daughter in an intimate double portrait. Created during a time of political upheaval in France’s Second Republic, the drawing reflects the era’s emphasis on refined portraiture among the aristo...
About the Artist
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres · 1780–1867
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was born on 29 August 1780 in Montauban, in the Tarn-et-Garonne region of southern France, into a family with deep artistic and musical connections — his father was a painter, sculptor, and musician. He showed exceptional promise from childhood, enrolling at the Académie Royale in Toulouse where he studied under the sculptor Jean-Pierre Vigan, the landscape painter Je...