Page "Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres" Paragraph 46

By the time of Ingres's retrospective at the Exposition Universelle in 1855, an emerging consensus viewed his portrait paintings as his masterpieces.

Their consistently high quality belies Ingres's often-stated complaint that the demands of portraiture robbed him of time he could have spent painting historical subjects.

The most famous of all of Ingres's portraits, depicting the journalist Louis-François Bertin, quickly became a symbol of the rising economic and political power of the bourgeoisie.

His portraits of women range from the warmly sensuous Madame de Senonnes ( 1814 ) to the realistic Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin ( 1821 ), the Junoesque Marie-Clothilde-Inés de Foucauld, Madame Moitessier ( portrayed standing and seated, 1851 and 1856 ), and the chilly Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, Princesse de Broglie ( 1853 ).