Lot Essay
Marie Reiset, known as Bibiche in her family, was Frédéric and Hortense Reiset's only child. Her parents were cousins and belonged to a large family distinguished by many talents and successful careers. Her parent's grandfather came from Colmar in Alsace where he had been a Receveur général des Finances and Maître des Eaux et Forêts. The most successful of his seventeen children was Marie-Antoine, Vicomte Reiset, a general of the Imperial army who was raised to the peerage by King Louis XVIII. His brother, Jacques-Louis-Etienne Reiset was Frédéric's father. He had become a Receveur général and his talent as a financier had soon brought him in contact with the administration of the army. His skill at moving swiftly across Europe the huge funds required by the military campaigns of Napoleon I had secured his position as one of the foremost civil servants of the Empire, and gave him the opportunity to amass a large fortune. When Frédéric's father died in 1835, he left his son, a man of private means, living in the fashionable street of the Chaussée d'Antin. He was soon engaged to his cousin, who lived a few blocks away on the same Chaussée d'Antin. Marie's parents were therefore part of a successful and influential circle of relations. Her three uncles, on her father's side were respectively a financier, a distinguished chemist and a diplomat.
Frédéric Reiset's career was however slow to take shape and would today be easily overlooked had it not been for an account of his achievements as a curator of drawings and pictures at the Louvre which the Marquis de Chennevières wrote in his Souvenirs d'un Directeur des Beaux-Arts.
Ingres played a part throughout Frédéric Reiset's life. The Reisets met Ingres on their honeymoon in Italy, the only occasion Frédéric Reiset visited that country. Ingres was then directeur de l'Académie de France. Marie Reiset was born shortly after their return to Paris on 27 August 1836. When Ingres came back to France in 1841, the Reisets became intimate friends with Ingres. He visited them frequently at their country house at Enghien, North of Paris. The house had belonged previously to Eugène Isabey. It was there that in 1844 Ingres drew four portraits of members of the family, including one of Madame Reiset standing with the little Marie, aged eight, nestling in her mother's skirt. Another drawing is the portrait of Frédéric Reiset which, along with Madame Reiset seated, as its pendant, are now in the collection of Sir Brinsley Ford in London, Sir Brinsley Ford, op. cit., pp. 356-9, both illustrated. At that stage of his career, Ingres regarded himself primarily as a history painter in the grand tradition of David. In his youth, during the difficult years which followed Napoleon's fall, the artist had depended financially on his talent as a portraitist. He had become a popular artist sketching the likeness of the famous travellers passing through Rome and Florence. Yet when he returned to Paris in 1824, Ingres was anxious to distance himself from the image of a portraitist. He refused all commissions and limited himself to drawing portraits of his closest friends. The older he became, the less frequently he bestowed on anyone the honor of sketching a likeness. The high degree of esteem in which he held the Reiset's can be judged from the series of portraits to which he added one of Madame Reiset's father, Louis Reiset, now in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Warrington, Cincinnati, Ohio.
A further mark of friendship was given by the artist when in 1846 he offered to paint a portrait of Madame Reiset, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. The level of frustration Ingres experienced when he painted a portrait reveals the degree of tension the artist submitted himself to. Delécluze wrote that in his portraits Ingres 'pursued the soul down to the slightest ripple of the skin.' The emotional intensity he brought to the task is well recorded. Indeed he became so involved on occasion that he is known to have wept in front of his models. Amaury-Duval recalled Ingres exclaiming on one such occasion 'It's very bad. I don't know how to draw anymore ... I don't know anymore. A portrait of a woman, nothing in the world is harder, it's unfeasible. It's enough to make one cry.' Ingres's admiration for Madame Reiset and his affection for his friend's family were such that he accepted to undergo such an ordeal for their portraits.
The present portrait, which dates to 1850, was executed in an even more dramatic context. Ingres was under the shock of his wife's death which was on 27 July 1849. Hippolyte Flandrin recorded that he and M. Reiset had taken 'ce bon maître dans un état affreux, à Enghien, où il est soigné comme par ses enfants.' [this good master, in a pittiful state, to Enghien where he was looked after by his friends as if by his own children]. These tragic years for the artist coincided with the troubled period of the Revolution of 1848 and the subsequent rise of the Emperor Napoleon III. The whole context makes this simple depiction of domestic life all the more touching for Ingres.
The political changes of the early 1850s led to a radical change in the lives of the Reiset. Frédéric Reiset became curator at the Louvre and his wife became lady-in-waiting to Princess Mattilde at the Château de Saint Gratien, near Enghien. The Marquis de Chennevières was under the impression that Ingres had taken an active part in securing for his friend this position at the Louvre. However, in an addendum to his Souvenirs, he corrected this assumption with the fact that Reiset owed his post to the Duc de Morny, step-brother of the Emperor. By 1848 Frédéric Reiset's collection was already renown and his opinion were sought after by amateurs such as His de la Salle. In a plea to the parliament, Reiset asked for a full time post of curator to be created to look after the 36,000 drawings stored at the Cabinets des Dessins. With the new regime, Reiset himself assumed that role. When M. de Nieuwerkerke became director of the French museums, Frédéric Reiset took over as director of the Louvre. His career there was brilliant, however it is remarkable that Ingres's friendship and esteem for Frédéric Reiset was such that it was well ahead of the recognition of his abilities by the official circles.
Reciprocally, Frédéric Reiset was a keen admirer of Ingres's art. The present drawing was one of thirty-five sheets which the amateur owned. Reiset had bought the Venus Anadyomène and the Roman self-portrait while he negotiated for the Louvre the purchase of the Bain Turc. In 1879, Reiset was forced to put up for sale at auction his collection. The Duc d'Aumale, the younger son of King Louis-Philippe, however purchased the collection en bloc before the auction. Thus the Musée Condé at Chantilly possesses some masterpieces by the artist, such as the portrait of Madame Antonia Duvaucey de Nittis of 1807, which again was bought from the sitter by Reiset through Ingres himself.
At the age of 20, six years after the present portrait was made, Marie Reiset married the son of the celebrated Comtesse de Ségur. She was the author of children's novels, born Sophie Rostoptschin, herself the daughter of the man who had started the great fire of Moscow at the time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The bridegroom was a member of parliament, Chevalier de la légion d'honneur, Commandeur des Ordres de Saint Grégoire le Grand et de Médjédée, Chevalier du Saint Sépulchre, des Ordres de Charles III d'Espagne and chevalier de Pie IX. A special decree in 1860 allowed him to add the extinct name of Lamoignon to his own. His country seat was the Château de Mery sur Oise.
Beyond the unassuming and simple pose of the young Marie Reiset is therefore expressed a world of connections and a mark of a lifelong friendship between two of the most respected figures of the art world of the 19th Century in Paris. The present drawing offers not only an insight into the way of life of a young lady in the early days of the Second Empire, standing in her domestic attire holding her King Charles Spaniel, but also displays in the shape of an exercise of virtuosity in draughtsmanship, and the respect that an artist like Ingres felt for a connoisseur like Reiset.
Marie Reiset died on 30 May 1899. Although her father's collection was dispersed at auction, the little portrait gallery of her family was kept and left in her will to her three children.
Frédéric Reiset's career was however slow to take shape and would today be easily overlooked had it not been for an account of his achievements as a curator of drawings and pictures at the Louvre which the Marquis de Chennevières wrote in his Souvenirs d'un Directeur des Beaux-Arts.
Ingres played a part throughout Frédéric Reiset's life. The Reisets met Ingres on their honeymoon in Italy, the only occasion Frédéric Reiset visited that country. Ingres was then directeur de l'Académie de France. Marie Reiset was born shortly after their return to Paris on 27 August 1836. When Ingres came back to France in 1841, the Reisets became intimate friends with Ingres. He visited them frequently at their country house at Enghien, North of Paris. The house had belonged previously to Eugène Isabey. It was there that in 1844 Ingres drew four portraits of members of the family, including one of Madame Reiset standing with the little Marie, aged eight, nestling in her mother's skirt. Another drawing is the portrait of Frédéric Reiset which, along with Madame Reiset seated, as its pendant, are now in the collection of Sir Brinsley Ford in London, Sir Brinsley Ford, op. cit., pp. 356-9, both illustrated. At that stage of his career, Ingres regarded himself primarily as a history painter in the grand tradition of David. In his youth, during the difficult years which followed Napoleon's fall, the artist had depended financially on his talent as a portraitist. He had become a popular artist sketching the likeness of the famous travellers passing through Rome and Florence. Yet when he returned to Paris in 1824, Ingres was anxious to distance himself from the image of a portraitist. He refused all commissions and limited himself to drawing portraits of his closest friends. The older he became, the less frequently he bestowed on anyone the honor of sketching a likeness. The high degree of esteem in which he held the Reiset's can be judged from the series of portraits to which he added one of Madame Reiset's father, Louis Reiset, now in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Warrington, Cincinnati, Ohio.
A further mark of friendship was given by the artist when in 1846 he offered to paint a portrait of Madame Reiset, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. The level of frustration Ingres experienced when he painted a portrait reveals the degree of tension the artist submitted himself to. Delécluze wrote that in his portraits Ingres 'pursued the soul down to the slightest ripple of the skin.' The emotional intensity he brought to the task is well recorded. Indeed he became so involved on occasion that he is known to have wept in front of his models. Amaury-Duval recalled Ingres exclaiming on one such occasion 'It's very bad. I don't know how to draw anymore ... I don't know anymore. A portrait of a woman, nothing in the world is harder, it's unfeasible. It's enough to make one cry.' Ingres's admiration for Madame Reiset and his affection for his friend's family were such that he accepted to undergo such an ordeal for their portraits.
The present portrait, which dates to 1850, was executed in an even more dramatic context. Ingres was under the shock of his wife's death which was on 27 July 1849. Hippolyte Flandrin recorded that he and M. Reiset had taken 'ce bon maître dans un état affreux, à Enghien, où il est soigné comme par ses enfants.' [this good master, in a pittiful state, to Enghien where he was looked after by his friends as if by his own children]. These tragic years for the artist coincided with the troubled period of the Revolution of 1848 and the subsequent rise of the Emperor Napoleon III. The whole context makes this simple depiction of domestic life all the more touching for Ingres.
The political changes of the early 1850s led to a radical change in the lives of the Reiset. Frédéric Reiset became curator at the Louvre and his wife became lady-in-waiting to Princess Mattilde at the Château de Saint Gratien, near Enghien. The Marquis de Chennevières was under the impression that Ingres had taken an active part in securing for his friend this position at the Louvre. However, in an addendum to his Souvenirs, he corrected this assumption with the fact that Reiset owed his post to the Duc de Morny, step-brother of the Emperor. By 1848 Frédéric Reiset's collection was already renown and his opinion were sought after by amateurs such as His de la Salle. In a plea to the parliament, Reiset asked for a full time post of curator to be created to look after the 36,000 drawings stored at the Cabinets des Dessins. With the new regime, Reiset himself assumed that role. When M. de Nieuwerkerke became director of the French museums, Frédéric Reiset took over as director of the Louvre. His career there was brilliant, however it is remarkable that Ingres's friendship and esteem for Frédéric Reiset was such that it was well ahead of the recognition of his abilities by the official circles.
Reciprocally, Frédéric Reiset was a keen admirer of Ingres's art. The present drawing was one of thirty-five sheets which the amateur owned. Reiset had bought the Venus Anadyomène and the Roman self-portrait while he negotiated for the Louvre the purchase of the Bain Turc. In 1879, Reiset was forced to put up for sale at auction his collection. The Duc d'Aumale, the younger son of King Louis-Philippe, however purchased the collection en bloc before the auction. Thus the Musée Condé at Chantilly possesses some masterpieces by the artist, such as the portrait of Madame Antonia Duvaucey de Nittis of 1807, which again was bought from the sitter by Reiset through Ingres himself.
At the age of 20, six years after the present portrait was made, Marie Reiset married the son of the celebrated Comtesse de Ségur. She was the author of children's novels, born Sophie Rostoptschin, herself the daughter of the man who had started the great fire of Moscow at the time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The bridegroom was a member of parliament, Chevalier de la légion d'honneur, Commandeur des Ordres de Saint Grégoire le Grand et de Médjédée, Chevalier du Saint Sépulchre, des Ordres de Charles III d'Espagne and chevalier de Pie IX. A special decree in 1860 allowed him to add the extinct name of Lamoignon to his own. His country seat was the Château de Mery sur Oise.
Beyond the unassuming and simple pose of the young Marie Reiset is therefore expressed a world of connections and a mark of a lifelong friendship between two of the most respected figures of the art world of the 19th Century in Paris. The present drawing offers not only an insight into the way of life of a young lady in the early days of the Second Empire, standing in her domestic attire holding her King Charles Spaniel, but also displays in the shape of an exercise of virtuosity in draughtsmanship, and the respect that an artist like Ingres felt for a connoisseur like Reiset.
Marie Reiset died on 30 May 1899. Although her father's collection was dispersed at auction, the little portrait gallery of her family was kept and left in her will to her three children.