Portrait of Jean-Louis Robin
Medium
Graphite, with stumping, on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
28.4 × 22.3 cm (11 3/16 × 8 13/16 in.)
Classification
graphite
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
79400
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Ingres famously said that “Drawing is everything; it is all of art,” and that “Smoke itself should be expressed by a line.” His celebrated portrait drawings exemplify his devotion to pure line. Ingres drew his portrait of Jean-Louis Robin, chief physician of the French Hospital in Rome, from the Villa Medici, the site of the French Academy in Rome, where the artist was in residence at the time. In the distance, drawn with technical precision, is Saint Peter’s Basilica. Using only graphite, wit...
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...