Madame Félix Gallois
Medium
Graphite with touches of gold in oil to highlight jewelry, on buff wove paper.
Dimensions
Sheet: 13 5/8 x 10 9/16 in. (34.6 x 26.8 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Robert Lehman Collection
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Accession Number
1975.1.647
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the elegant *Madame Félix Gallois* (1852), Jean Auguste Ingres captures the poised likeness of a bourgeois Frenchwoman with his signature Neoclassical precision. Created late in the artist's career—at age 72—this intimate portrait exemplifies Ingres' mastery of line and form, honed over decades as a leading draftsman and painter. Madame Gallois, likely a sitter from Paris's upper society, gazes directly at the viewer, her features rendered with the crystalline clarity that defined Ingres' style, influenced by his admiration for Raphael and antique sculpture. Executed on buff wove paper, th...
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...