page_title: Portrait of Monsieur Bertin
section_title: Preparation and execution
hierarchical_section_title: Portrait of Monsieur Bertin / The portrait / Preparation and execution
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing study for Portrait of monsieur Bertin
context_page_description: Portrait of Monsieur Bertin is an 1832 oil on canvas painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It depicts Louis-François Bertin, the French writer, art collector and director of the pro-royalist Journal des débats. Ingres completed the portrait during his first period of success; having achieved acclaim as a history painter, he accepted portrait commissions with reluctance, regarding them as a distraction from more important work. Bertin was a friend and a politically active member of the French upper-middle class. Ingres presents him as a personification of the commercially minded leaders of the liberal reign of Louis Philippe I. He is physically imposing and self-assured, but his real-life personality shines through – warm, wry and engaging to those who had earned his trust.
  The painting had a prolonged genesis. Ingres agonised over the pose and made several preparatory sketches. The final work faithfully captures the sitter's character, conveying both a restless energy and imposing bulk. It is an unflinchingly realistic depiction of ageing and emphasises the furrowed skin and thinning hair of an overweight man who yet maintains his resolve and determination.
context_section_description: Ingres was self-critical and consumed by self-doubt. He often took months to complete a portrait, leaving large periods of inactivity between sittings. With Bertin, he agonised in finding a pose to best convey both the man's restless energy and his age. At least seven studies survive, three are signed and dated. Ingres was a master draftsman and the sketches, if not fully realised, are highly regarded in their own right. The sketches are exemplary in their handling of line and form, and similar in size.
  The earliest study has Bertin standing and leaning on a table in an almost Napoleonic pose. His hard, level stare is already established, but the focus seems to be on his groin rather than his face. Ingres struggled with the sketch; the head is on a square of attached paper which must have replaced an earlier cut-out version, and other areas have been rubbed over and heavily reworked. The next extant drawing shows Bertin seated, but the chair is missing. The last extant sketch is the closest to the eventual painting, with a chair, though his bulk has not yet been filled out.
  Frustrated by his inability to capture his subject, Ingres broke down in tears in his studio, in company. Bertin recalled "consoling him: 'my dear Ingres, don't bother about me; and above all don't torment yourself like that. You want to start my portrait over again? Take your own time for it. You will never tire me, and just as long as you want me to come, I am at your orders.'" After agreeing to a breathing spell Ingres finally settled on a design. 
  Early biographers provide differing anecdotes regarding the inspiration for the distinctive seated pose. Henri Delaborde said Ingres observed Bertin in this posture while arguing politics after dinner with his sons. According to Eugène Emmanuel Amaury Duval (who said he had heard the story from Bertin), Ingres noticed a pose Bertin took while seated outside with Ingres and a third man at a café. Bertin said that Ingres, confident that he had finally established the pose for the portrait, "came close and speaking almost in my ear said: 'Come sit tomorrow, your portrait is [as good as] done.'" Bertin's final pose reverses the usual relationship between the two men. The artist becomes the cool, detached observer; Bertin, usually calm and reasoned, is now restless and impatient, mirroring Ingres' irritation at spending time on portraiture.
caption: Ingres, 1832 study on black charcoal and graphite on paper. Musée Ingres, Montauban
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