Portrait of Adolphe-Marcellin Defresne, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Graphite pencil on paper, roughly 17×12 inches (43×29 cm). Original is in the Morgan Library and Museum.
Here is another of Ingres’s wonderful pencil portraits, with his trademark combination of exacting portraiture, and loose, almost casual rendering of the figure.
The Morgan Library’s page offers both a zoomable and downloadable version of the image, though the zoomable is a bit larger. Note the “full screen” icon at the right of the controls under the zoomable image.
See my previous Eye Candy post on Ingres’ pencil portrait of the subject’s wife: Mme Adolphe-Marcellin Defresne, née Sophie Leroy.
Link: Portrait of Adolphe-Marcellin Defresne, Morgan Library
This really looks like it was done from a photograph. And the drawing of the multi-desk at his side (what IS that?) was drawn with a ruler.
I think it’s fairly certain Ingres used a straight edge for the “standing desk” (and we thought the idea was new), but I don’t think there is any reliable information about whether Ingres may have used optical aids, like a camera lucida. I don’t think clear, accurate observation on the part of an accomplished artist is as “unnatural” as some people may think — particularly if the artist is working sight-size.
Ingres didn’t need a camera to draw, that’s for sure. What is more surprising is the flagrant perspective error of one of the supports of the desk and the bizarre disappearing forearm on his right side!
Defresne reminds me of a dandified young Robert Mitchum.