"Ingres' portraits in lead-pencil," writes M. Henry Lapauze, "are the most remarkable, if indeed they might not be called the greatest, productions of his genius.... In them we find unquestionably that quality of realism, over-conscientious, perhaps, but devoid of all coarseness, and that power of imparting life which in his large paintings is more or less concealed beneath the formality of his style."
The drawing reproduced in plate iii, and now in the Bonnat Collection at Bayonne, was made in Florence in 1822, as a preparatory study for a portrait in oil, executed in the following year. Drawn with a sureness of touch, a breadth, simplicity, and freedom, and at the same time a scrupulous precision, every line is significant. Monsieur Leblanc himself, dressed according to the fashion of the day in high silk hat and ample cloak, seems to stand before us in miniature.
'MADAME DESTOUCHE' (DRAWING)
[PLATE IV]
"The drawing in the Louvre of Madame Destouche," writes M. Momméja, "is perhaps the most beautiful, the most worthy of being placed first in the series of those incomparable portraits which Ingres' pencil has rendered as immortal on their frail sheets of paper as are those that have been cut into indestructible bronze by the Italian medalists.
"Count Delaborde was, I believe, the first to remark upon this exquisite work. Writing of Ingres' drawings exhibited at the Salon des Arts-Unis in 1861, he says: 'The pencil portrait of Madame Destouche should especially be noticed—a drawing so masterly in its freedom, so fine in its picturesque quality, and in the originality of its costume.' And ten years later he wrote: 'This portrait is one of the most beautiful that Ingres ever drew.'
"Who then was this young woman who smiles so sweetly and takes such evident delight in her life and in her beauty? Possibly she was the wife of the artist Destouche, whose name figures on the list of David's pupils. Born in 1794, he must have married very young for Ingres to have drawn in Rome in 1816 a portrait of his wife, and yet the age of the lady here represented is quite suitable to that of a husband of twenty-two. Whoever she was, let us be grateful to her for having furnished Ingres with the subject for a masterpiece.
"She is truly elegant—Madame Destouche; her long gown, with its girdle just beneath the bust, is profusely trimmed with lace at the wrists and about the low-cut neck. A bit of delicate muslin, also edged with lace, covers her shoulders, and around her throat is a sort of ruff of plaited gauze, open in front to show the throat, around which is wound in a triple coil a chain with cross attached. As to her hat—it is a poem; a little peculiar, it may be, but charmingly becoming with its brim coquettishly turned up and with its high crown rounded like a cap beneath a cluster of nodding plumes....
"Never, perhaps, was the artist's delicate pencil more seductive, never did it more perfectly realize that physical charm of modeling which is like a caress, characteristic—as M. Roger Marx has truly said—of the creations of Ingres."
'THE STAMATY FAMILY' (DRAWING)
[PLATE V]
The family group reproduced in plate V, and now in the Bonnat Collection at Bayonne, is one of the finest examples of Ingres' work in pencil. It was drawn in Rome in 1818, and represents Monsieur Stamaty, consul at Cività Vecchia, with his wife and children. "The characterization," writes M. Galichon, "is delicately and accurately given. Each person bears the stamp of his or her own individuality and is strikingly true to life. In short, Ingres has here produced a masterpiece."