Madame Armand Bertin, née Marie-Anne-Cécile Dollfuss

Madame Armand Bertin, née Marie-Anne-Cécile Dollfuss, created by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in 1843, is a superb example of the artist's mastery within the genre of portrait drawing. Executed meticulously in graphite, this work highlights Ingres's renowned technical precision and his unwavering dedication to the purity of line. Unlike his large-scale oil paintings, the medium of drawing allowed Ingres to capture an immediate, often intimate, and exacting likeness of his sitter, Madame Bertin.

This classification of work, known for its fine detail and sensitive rendering, demonstrates Ingres’s ability to use simple materials to convey sophisticated psychological depth. The graphite lines delineate not only the features of the subject’s face but also the texture of her hair and the details of her early Victorian-era fashion, placing her among the prominent women of mid-19th-century Parisian society. The subject was the wife of Louis-François Bertin, the powerful director of the Journal des Débats, whom Ingres famously immortalized in oil over a decade earlier.

Although the drawing of Madame Bertin was completed later than her husband's definitive portrait, it retains Ingres's foundational commitment to the Neo-Classical ideal of formal purity and anatomical exactitude. This piece serves as an important study in French 19th-century portraiture, illustrating the artist’s consistent output of high-quality drawings throughout his career. This historical work is held within the esteemed collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. High-resolution prints of this graphite drawing are frequently available through public domain initiatives, ensuring the broad study and appreciation of Ingres's delicate technical skill.