Template:POTD/2020-03-08
The Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville is an 1845 oil-on-canvas painting by French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Although more interested in depicting historical scenes, Ingres received few commissions for them, and found that he could better support his family if he painted portraits instead. By 1845, he was at the height of his fame as a portrait painter, and accepted a commission to paint Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville. She was 27 at the time; Ingres had sketched her with black chalk as a preparatory drawing two or three years earlier, and begun an oil-on-canvas painting, but that was abandoned when she became pregnant with her third child and was thus unable to pose further. Ingres's new portrait differs from the original in showing her facing in the opposite direction and introducing her reflection in a mirror. The countess found the long and slow sittings wearisome, at one stage complaining that "for the last nine days Ingres has been painting on one of the hands". The painting is now part of the Frick Collection in New York City.Painting credit: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres