.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
These two sketches, together with a third, nearly identical to the second sheet in this lot and known from a reproduction published on 27 April 1864 in the journal L’Autographe (H. Naef, Die Bildniszeichnugen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, III, Bern, 1979, p. 457, fig. 3), appear to be made as a design for a funerary monument for one of Ingres’ favorite pupils, Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864). Ingres, who must have learned the news of Flandrin’s death soon after it occured on 21 March, dated the latter drawing on 8 April, and inscribed it with the same sentence seen here: ‘Death itself regrets the blow it has dealt’. This thought echoes what the 84-year-old Ingres is said to have exclaimed to Flandrin’s brother Paul, also an artist, when he learned of Hippolyte’s passing: ‘Death has made a mistake!’ (‘La mort s’est trompée!’; cited in Foucart, op. cit., p. 217). The stele against which the younger artist, dressed à l’antique, falls is inscribed in the three drawings with some of his most famous works, mainly monumental church decorations in Paris and beyond.
The pair of drawings offered here, described by Jacques Foucart as ‘beautiful in thought and Ingres at his best’ (‘d’une très belle pensée et du meilleur Ingres qui soit’; Foucart, op cit., p. 217), were presented by the artist to Flandrin’s widow, and stayed in her family until shortly before they appeared on the market in 2001. A monument to Flandrin (still in situ) by the architect Victor Baltard was erected in the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1866 by a committee of ‘ses amis, ses élèves, ses admirateurs’, which included Ingres (Foucart, op. cit., p. 217; P. Pinon, Louis-Pierre et Victor Baltard, Paris, 2005, p. 164, fig. 159).
The pair of drawings offered here, described by Jacques Foucart as ‘beautiful in thought and Ingres at his best’ (‘d’une très belle pensée et du meilleur Ingres qui soit’; Foucart, op cit., p. 217), were presented by the artist to Flandrin’s widow, and stayed in her family until shortly before they appeared on the market in 2001. A monument to Flandrin (still in situ) by the architect Victor Baltard was erected in the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1866 by a committee of ‘ses amis, ses élèves, ses admirateurs’, which included Ingres (Foucart, op. cit., p. 217; P. Pinon, Louis-Pierre et Victor Baltard, Paris, 2005, p. 164, fig. 159).