Jacques Marguet de Norvins

Jacques Marguet de Norvins is a significant early graphic work by the neoclassical master Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, executed as a lithograph between 1806 and 1812. This early nineteenth-century print captures the sitter, Jacques Marguet de Norvins (1761-1850), a prominent statesman, historian, and intellectual figure in France during the tumultuous period of the First Empire.

Ingres created the work while residing in Rome, a period following his Prix de Rome victory that was critical in cementing his rigorous attention to line and academic form. While Ingres is internationally recognized for his monumental oil canvases, he often utilized graphic media for immediate and penetrating portrait studies of his contemporaries. The utilization of the lithograph demonstrates the artist’s keen interest in experimentation, as this scalable print technique was relatively new, having been recently invented around 1796.

The medium allowed Ingres to achieve a remarkable sense of immediacy. The sensitive rendering relies on delicate hatching and subtle shading, capturing the sitter's intellectual gravity with characteristic neoclassical precision. This style of detailed portraiture was highly favored in French artistic circles.

The subject, Norvins, was a close friend and literary peer of the artist. As an important example of Ingres's graphic production and an early reflection of the mastery he would later achieve in formal painting, this work is currently preserved within the comprehensive prints collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.