page_title: Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight (Ingres)
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight (Ingres) / Description
caption_attribution_description: Self-portrait, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1864
context_page_description: Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight is an 1858 oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It is one of the last of his many portraits, which he had always regarded as bothersome distractions from his true calling, history painting. The painting measures 24 3/8 x 20 1/8 inches and is in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
  The self-portrait is renowned for its honest treatment of the physical effects of old age. Ingres' expression is foreboding and intense, and he is tightly wrapped in stiff military like clothes. The work was painted at a point when Ingres, owing to age, could no longer commit to society portraits, which typically took him 4-5 years to complete. Ingres was to live a further nine years, dying on 14 January 1867, aged 86.
context_section_description: The self-portrait is brutally honest and mostly bereft of vanity; as a study of old age it goes beyond even his Portrait of Monsieur Bertin which he deliberately invokes. As always, Ingres took Raphael as his stylistic ideal. The 1669 self-portrait by Rembrandt, an artist Ingres generally held in low regard, has been suggested as an influence as well.
  Ingres presents himself in half bust view, dressed in clothing that suggest a cultivated, rich, well traveled and influential man. He is slimmer in the painting than he was in real life at the time, and wears an evening dress uniform that reflects his status as grand officer in Napoleon's Legion of Honour. Although Ingres appears aged and troubled, the portrait contains hints of optimism; he had been widowed but had recovered and was happily married to his second wife Dominique Rame, and could look back on a commercially successful if not artistically fulfilling career. He gives himself a grim expression, with a down turned mouth, which art historians view as overstating his existential view – extant photographs from the period show him almost, or about to smile, and his letters from this period reflect a degree of contentment. 
  His expression is often interpreted by modern art historians as conflicted, troubled and bad tempered, the reflection of a frustrated history painter at the end of a career spent largely on society painting.
  The painting was widely praised when first exhibited, and is today considered one of the finest examples of self-portraiture in art history. It is often compared to Rembrandt's later self-portraits, although Ingres's work contains hints of vanity that the older master's did not; Ingres has smoothed out his skin and has more and darker grey hair than contemporary photographs suggest.
  Ingres painted two variant copies of the portrait. One was completed in 1859, when Ingres reworked an octagonal, oil-on-paper sketch he had made for the Uffizi portrait. By mounting it on a rectangular canvas, he made it into a pendant for his Portrait of Madame Ingres, painted the same year. In this version Ingres wears several state decorations and ribbons, and he holds a top hat with a gloved hand. The face is more loosely painted than in the Uffizi portrait, and Ingres does not omit the cowlick that is apparent in the source photograph. The portrait is in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.
  Ingres painted a near-replica of the Fogg painting in 1864–65 to fulfill a membership obligation to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, which owns the painting.
caption: Self-Portrait, 1864–65, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
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