Featured White Papers
Content provided in partnership with
Ingres's studio between history and allegory: Rachel, antiquity, and tragedie
Art Bulletin, The, Sept, 2006 by Sarah Betzer
60. Chasseriau's formulation here very closely follows Gautier's description of "la beaute hebraique": "Raphael n'a pas trouve pour ses madones un ovale plus chastement allonge, un nez d'une coupe plus delicate et plus noble, des sourcils d'une courbe plus pure." Gautier, Voyage en Algerie, 39-40, quoted in Moussa, "Arabes et juives," 207.
61. Claude Vignon (Noemie Cadiot) typifies this disposition in her Salon criticism of 1850-51, where she declared that "we love the beautiful and chaste forms of the antique, whose rudimentary principles are preserved in the Jewish race." Vignon, Salon de 1850-1851 (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1851), 42-43, quoted in Gen Doy, Women and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century France, 1800-1852 (London: Leicester University Press, 1998), 185.
62. The portraits of Rachel examined here were produced within a larger topography of female portraits by Ingres and his studio, many of which demonstrate the group's practice of allegorical portraiture. See Sarah Betzer, "Flesh to Stone: Ingriste Women and Portraiture in the Circle of Ingres between Rome and Paris, 1825-1870" (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2003); and idem, "Ingres's Second Madame Moitessier. 'Le Brevet du Peintre d'Histoire,'" Art History 23, no. 5 (December 2000): 681-705.
63. The years following Chasseriau's visit to Algiers were marked by his artistic and literal breaks with both atelier style and the maitre himself. See Benedite, Chasseriau, sa vie et son oeuvre.
64. Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), F/21/61, "Arrete: M. Amaury Duval, Rue St Lazare, 54, Peinture: La Tragedie." This document unquestionably concerns the portrait of Rachel by Amaury-Duval. The final painting measures 65 3/4 by 45 1/4 in. (167 by 115 cm).
65. Like Chasseriau, Amaury-Duval went often to see the actress onstage; notes in Amaury-Duval's calendars from 1847, for instance, record seven excursions to see Rachel perform or to visit her in her dressing room. Manuscripts held in Amaury-Duval's archives evidence great familiarity with (and professed devotion to) the actress and her oeuvre. Archives de la Societe Eduenne des Lettres, Sciences et Arts, Autun, fonds Amaury-Duval, K8 Amaury-Duval 36.
66. This study, measuring 18 1/4 by 12 1/4 in. (46.5 cm by 31 cm), was sold at auction in 1988. See Tableaux des XIXe et XXe siecles (Paris: Nouveau Drouot Salles, 1988), cat. no. 41. The existence of the study, dated 1851, suggests that Amaury-Duval had already solidified the critical elements of the painting, perhaps as early as three years prior to the date of the commission. The study was recently reproduced in Judith Weschler, Rachel, une vie pour le theatre 1821-1858, exh. cat., Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme, Paris, 2004, 78.
67. For documentation of Rachel's hotel particulier, completed in 1849 and destroyed during Baron Haussmann's radical remaking of Paris, see J. A. Luthereau, Charles Duval, architecte (Paris: Bibliotheque Nouvelle des Illustrations Europeennes, 1856), 14-18; Anatole Pierson, "Hotel Rachel," Moniteur des Architectes (March 1858): 156; and Archives de la Comedie-Francaise, Paris (hereafter ACF), dossier 1.72 on Amaury-Duval's Portrait de Rachel (Tragedie).
