Baronne de Rothschild

Portrait of Baronne de Rothschild
Baronne de Rothschild, Rothschild Collection, Paris
Artist	Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Year	1848 (1848)
Type	Oil painting
Subject	Betty de Rothschild (1805–1886)
Dimensions	141.9 cm × 101 cm (55.9 in × 40 in)

Baronne de Rothschild is a 1848 portrait by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The sitter, Betty de Rothschild (1805–1886) had married banker James Mayer de Rothschild and was one of the wealthiest women in Europe, and one of the foremost Parisian patrons of the arts. Her beauty and elegance were widely known and celebrated, and inspired Heinrich Heine's poem The Angel. For her portrait, which is painted in oil on canvas, Ingres sought to infuse symbols of her material wealth with the dignity, grace and beauty of Renaissance art, especially that of Raphael, while at the same time adhering to the command of line as practiced by Jan van Eyck. It is this combination which, according to art historians, places Ingres so far apart from his early modernist contemporaries.

Betty de Rothschild's portrait is regarded as one of Ingres' most accomplished works, and has been described as "perhaps the most sumptuous yet approachable image of mid-nineteenth-century opulence."

She first asked Ingres to paint her in 1841 when he was much sought after as a reluctant portraitist. His ambition lay in history painting which he believed was a higher form of art, while his living lay in commissions for the nobility. At this point he was financially comfortable and refused. After meeting her at a ball and finding her highly charming, he agreed to the commission. In a letter of 26 June 1842 to his friend Jean-Pierre-François Gilibert, Ingres wrote: "Tuesday, I have a definite sitting with Mme. de Rothschild, which came at the price of a dozen puerile and sincere letters. Long live portraits! may God damn them…!" The painting was not completed for another six years: there were false starts, and progress was interrupted while he took time to work on other portraits – including his portrait of the late Ferdinand Philippe Henri the Duc d'Orlean who was killed in a carriage accident in 1842. Although Ingres had nearly finished Mme de Rothschild's head by February 1843, in June 1844 he made a new start. As the first version of the portrait is not known to survive, it is probable that Ingres scraped it down and painted the new version on top of it. In June 1847 he wrote: "I have barely finished Mme. de Rothschild, begun again better, and the portrait of Mme Moitessier." The painting was completed in 1848.