Ingres's Madame Moitessier | Talks for All | National Gallery

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is Christopher Rhea pal I am the curator of post 1800 paintings here at the National Gallery and I want to talk to you today particularly about this painting Jean abuse Dominic gang's portrait of Madame Mata CA now one of the questions my my fellow curators will certainly agree with me one of the questions that we are most frequently asked about paintings is how long did it take to paint it and in fact it's a very good question because when you know the answer you begin to be able to figure out a number of things about the artist about his or her sensibility about their technique because obviously very close and detailed painting takes a good deal longer than more fluid and expressive painting you can tell if they're working with assistants things like that and the amount of time it takes to paint a picture can range from half an hour if you go downstairs in the ground floor gallery that we devote to the landscape oil sketch we know that many of them would have been done in about half an hour because at the academy you were taught to do them that quickly because they were not finished pictures you were simply capturing an effective light a motif in nature that you might be able to use again sometime later because it wasn't finished because light atmosphere changes every half-hour the whole point was to work as quickly as possible so the amount of time can range from a half hour down up two weeks up to months it would be the rare painting by the rare artist that would take a year that that would be a long time the other the other factor involved is how many paintings is the artist working on simultaneously that too can affect it so from half an hour to a year and then there's Madame mata CA 12 years - to execute this painting and part of the fascination of the work is indeed the struggle that it took for him to bring this extraordinarily complicated work to completion now Sean Argos Dominic Pangborn in Montalban in 1780 Montalban the South of France the son of a minor painter his talent recognized by his father quite early he sent to good teachers and finally he is sent in the years of the revolution he is sent to Paris where he becomes a student of the greatest of all French artists at that moment jacques-louis David and we see here from about the time that Aang is entering David's studio a glorious example of David's portraiture it is his portrait of Yakupov Lau of 1795 yacouba's Blau is the Batavian ambassador to the revolutionary government in France Batavia is the what is Holland basically had now declared itself a republic in deep sympathy with the French Revolution and Yakupov Lau there to support the French Revolution but also to ensure good relationships between Holland Batavia and the French Republic and you see the mastery of David if you think of the tradition of aristocratic portraiture that we see in this building by say Rubens van Dyck it's usually aristocrats at their leisure and very fancy clothes standing there not care in the world their insouciance is part of the subject of the painting well in the French Revolution things are moving very quickly history is being made on a daily basis there would be no place for a portraiture of gentlemen at their ease and so what extraordinarily and so wonderfully de vie does is really to vent a new kind of portraiture showing men for the most part at work and that exactly is what's going on here we have interrupted Blau as he is writing as he is working say on a petition to the government on a declaration of friendship between France and Holland he is not indifferent to us but he has other things on his mind it is you might say a thinking portrait a man of action caught caught at his desk at work indeed a few years later when Napoleon came to power David would paint him surrounded by the books of French law as he as he prepared the Napoleonic Code the great new legal system of France based on the Enlightenment and there's a clock beside his desk and the clock shows that Napoleon is at work at three o'clock in the morning as if to say Napoleon only works for France and all of his time is devoted to France so it is in this context in this training in images like this that the young egg reaches his maturity as an artist David considers him arguably one of the very greatest students but it's also certainly his most difficult he says that a few years later the man is mad I have no idea what he's what he's up to when he begins to move off in his own own direction but it is coming out of this hot house of David in the midst of the the revolution that Ann comes of age in 1801 he wins the Prix de Rome this prize that will send him to Rome to study art for three years he is unable to go it is turmoil war etc the money from the government is not available for him to go so he lingers in Paris until 1980 no 6 excuse me when he goes down to begin what will be 18 not three but 18 by the end of it years of study and very hard work in in Rome in Italy first Rome and then in Florence and we have one of the great portraits that hang executed during that period in Rome it is the portrait of Monsieur John or van Monsieur de Northam was the chief of police in Rome during the Napoleonic occupation during the French occupation of the city he is the model for Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca the the police chief there and a standout said of him a thoroughly wicked man but in this elegant portrait you see and portraying him as an official even adopting Napoleon's signature gesture of the hand into the waistcoat as soon as Napoleon began to fall he would flee Rome as quickly as he could living up to stand our description of him during these years in Italy Aang is forced to make a living to paint by painting and making drawn portraits of the French and Italy of some Italians and then after the fall of Napoleon by all of the grand tourists suddenly Europe is open again everyone can travel tourists from across Europe poorab down into Italy for the first time in about 15 17 years and they can they want a souvenir so they all go to Monsieur Aang does these glorious portrait drawings for the most part of of these people we know that they are the work of one day they're astonishingly detailed but you went in the morning you sat for a couple of hours and you came back the next day to to pay for and receive your drawing so this is a man perfectly capable of working at speed but he got very tired of this he had higher ambitions than just being a portraitist he wanted to great historical pictures he wanted to paint pictures on the grand themes of antiquity of history as I say history was unfolding so rapidly in those years and he wanted to be the recording angel in the on the model of of his teacher David and so after he returned to France in 1824 and he returns in in triumph he sends a picture back to Paris in 1824 a big altarpiece which is received with such excitement that he is suddenly the flavor of the week the favor of the month everyone wants to know who this man they haven't seen since 1806 is and as I say he returns in triumph instantly one of the most famous artists in Paris comparable really only with his friend whom he admired and dellacroix remarked mao-chan dellacroix you see a dellacroix portrait on that wall so there they are in the middle of Paris famous artists in the mid 1820s and of course everybody comes to and asking for his portrait to be painted and he accepts a few commissions but realizes at the same time that if he doesn't sort of draw a line he is going to be pushed into this thing and never get away from portraiture never have the opportunity to paint the big pictures he really wants to do on which at that point true glory resided and so he starts to turn down more and more commissions to work on big history paintings instead and is only in very very rare circumstances that he accepts to do a portrait one of those rare circumstances comes in 1844 when the this through a circuitous route and I will come to explain what happens he is commissioned to paint the portrait of this woman who is Madame and I can't be expected to remember all this Madame Paul sig is there Mata CA who is the matter Clothilde Ynez de Fuko a grande French family her father is a big figure in the ministry of state domains running the sort of property of France and he has a very good friend in the ministry a man in Charl market who is also Aang's best friend there is a lifelong correspondence between the two of them they always talk told everything to to one another and so cleverly Monsieur de Fuko so-called realizes that in order to get back to accept paint his daughter's portrait he should go through market the friend and market the friend holds a dinner party introduces them lays the proposition before of painting this woman at first he had said no no no then he meets her and he declares that it is her beauty that has won him over and yes he will agree to yes he will agree to paint her it is a very lucrative Commission he is going to be Angus painted a lot of paid a lot of money and he would be paid a lot of money for this but you see I think how he if we pick apart I did it because of her beauty and the and the markets connection you see what he's doing he's he's doing he's making a lucrative business transaction but he's saying I'm doing it for friendship and I'm doing it for the sake of beauty so it distances himself from from a mere economic transaction and allows him to put himself on a higher plane he then does nothing for about a year but in forty five begins to work up drawings that will that will - this portrait and he gets her pose almost immediately and I show you this picture it is a I'm sorry you can't see it well it is a ancient Roman fresco excavated at Herculaneum showing Hercules and um Saleh confronting one and other this great ancient Roman goddess and you see she's sitting there with this wonderful gesture of her hand to her temple ancud seen this Roman fresco on his trips to Naples and he would know that connoisseurs also would know this fresco it was within the repertoire of images that people would know so he borrows this right away right from the first drawing he's figured out this absolutely basic thing he's going to present her as a kind of Juno she has recently had a young a baby a daughter young Catherine and the original conception is that it is going to be a double portrait mother and daughter and the little girl is to be leaning her head on her mother's lap very sweet very lovely like I suppose like a raphael madonna and child he works on this for a while he he doesn't advance very far his wife his dearly beloved wife dies and he lays everything inside he doesn't really paint anything for two years and the mcnaught SJ and her husband sort of allow that they don't put any pressure on him and only slowly does he get back at the end of the 50s to doing little things but advancing not really advancing very far on this portrait at all cancelling sittings not really focusing on it for for whatever for whatever reason until in 1851 and this reminds us as it reminded aang that this is a business proposition Monsieur Noirtier comes back and is very angry and says we're already seven years into this I want this portrait done and and does something quite extraordinary he puts this painting completely aside and instead of painting that he paints a six-second completely different portrait of Madame Mata CA and I show you it's even larger than this one it's a glorious thing now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington she's wearing a glorious black dress flowers in her hair she's about to go out to the Opera it is the same meticulous utterly fine handling of paint that you see in all of Aang's works and he completes this in eight months so again he is perfectly capable at working at a reasonable at irrational pace and I would defy you to find any as it were difference in quality in the paint handling between this picture and the picture in Washington several years ago when we did our great exhibition on Aang's portraits we had them there the two of them side by side and they are both glorious and it it was delivered as I say within eight months Monsieur Noirtier was very happy with it as well he might have been the business side of the equation was over and so now he could go back working on this at his own pace because his obligation had been fulfilled so he goes back he continues to work on the portrait the little daughter of three is now a much bigger she's not an infant on her young mother's lap she's sort of a middle aged mother now and the first of several important decisions is made Catherine is edited out of the out of the picture she will not you need to ould be leaning on her mother's lap she is simply removed it will be madam what SCA alone and then as research in our conservation labs revealed a few years ago when it was to be mother and daughter to sit them both in madam wat si was further to the left to leave room for the daughter at some point probably about this time it cannot read that's really the only explanation when the daughter is edited out the canvas is taken off its stretcher moved over to the right so that madam is absolutely central and it's really carries on he sends they moved into a very glamorous house new house he sends his assistants to go and do drawings of the of the Blasi of the furniture in the room so that he has things in front of him to work with he determines on this wonderful thing where her profile is seen in the mirror behind her he sends her notes when you come for such and such a sitting where the emeralds oh I want to see you in the emeralds today and we'll see if that works so it's a kind of collaboration as they worked through which jewels she's going to wear that kind of thing he begins to add extraordinarily beautiful objects such as this Japanese Amaury vase that you see to the left and a Persian maybe even a mogul a fan that is there showing her taste showing the elegance of her home showing her refinement that she had such marvelous things and at a certain point and it's in none of the drawings so it's a free invention the back of the settee on which she is resting he shows the carving of the back and he shows in carved wood a tiny little puto a tiny little angel who's blowing a kiss to - madam what SCA its his sort of private love letter to her we are now up to 1855 eleven years since the commission was first given at which point and makes an extraordinary change of direction yet another extraordinary change of direction up until this point through eleven years Madame Mata CA has been wearing a yellow silk dress pure yellow underneath this testing reveals we find the pure yellow paint in 1855 there is a great Universal Exposition in Paris one of the highlights of the exhibition which has all of Paris talking or one of the first sumptuous displays of the Lyonnaise flowered silks these flowered silks being manufactured in lyon absolutely luxurious objects luxurious pieces of cloth making completely surrounded drenched in flowers designed by people such as Antoine Bell Jean we have one of Belgium's flower paintings here Lyon was the great school of flower paintings and many of the flower painters were also working in the silk industry designing for them I don't say that this dresses comes from a bell showing design but it's in this milieu that these extraordinary pieces of cloth were being woven and they were being turned into sumptuous evening dress the Empress Eugenie the wife of Napoleon the third took them up began wearing them began appearing at the Opera began appearing at balls in these dresses and so madam what SJ ever fashionable had to do the same thing so at the very last moment the yellow dress disappears and it is replaced by this sumptuous work of lien a silk flower silk which anyone in Paris in 1855 56 would recognize as absolutely the latest chic the latest statement of high Parisian fashion and that is how he works through 56 that is how in very early 57 when it is first revealed to the world she is wearing but Eng for whom more is always more and at the very end does one more thing to make this extraordinary portrait more extraordinary still which is he designs its frame and you see the frame completely covered with flowers it's as if the flowers off the dress have spilled out into the frame itself and so it becomes a total unity a total piece of art in which the frame is absolutely integral a wonderful fantasy on the part of and the picture was acquired from France by the National Gallery in 1946 it is our first great acquisition after the war the director was Kenneth Clark Kenneth Clark was very worried that he was going to be thought frivolous for buying such a painting so he took off the frame and put a very chaste very elegant simple frame on it that was on it for many many years until sometime in the 60s they someone spotted this glorious frame in storage realized what it was and returned it to its rightful portrait which we see on it now so I will I will stop there thank you you

Channel: The National Gallery

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Keywords: fineart, artgallery, painting, museum, arthistory, European Art, The National Gallery, london, ingres, madame moitessier, talks for all, chris riopelle, portraiture, portrait

Id: vg-YRAlPmbs

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019