Art Institute of Chicago

Portrait of Jean-Louis Robin

Jean–Auguste–Dominique Ingres

Date

c. 1810

Medium

Graphite, with stumping, on ivory wove paper

Culture

France

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Ingres famously said that “Drawing is everything; it is all of art,” and that “Smoke itself should be expressed by a line.” His celebrated portrait drawings exemplify his devotion to pure line. Ingres drew his portrait of Jean-Louis Robin, chief physician of the French Hospital in Rome, from the Villa Medici, the site of the French Academy in Rome, where the artist was in residence at the time. In the distance, drawn with technical precision, is Saint Peter’s Basilica. Using only graphite, with an astonishing economy of means and in the absence of color and modeling, Ingres rendered a personality and a setting as fully realized as in any painted portrait.

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