''Portrait of Madame Oudiné'' is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist

Hippolyte Flandrin Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (23 March 1809 – 21 March 1864) was a French Neoclassical painter. His most celebrated work, ''Study (Flandrin), Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer'' ("Young Male Nude Seated beside the Sea"), from 1836, is held in ...

, executed in 1840, now in the

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon (french: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon) is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. Located near the Place des Terreaux, it is housed in a former Benedictine convent which was active during the 1 ...

History

It depicts the young wife of Eugène Oudiné, one of Flandrin's fellow painters at the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with a garden contiguous with the larger Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in Rome, Italy. The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, ...

. It was the first portrait Flandrin painted after his return from Rome and he produced it after a relatively short time lapse. It was very successfully exhibited at the

Paris Salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

of 1840. The painting is interpreted as meant to symbolize bourgeois virtue as the pose of the woman appears devoid of life, very rigid and each element seems to highlight modesty and chastity, everything here being, according to Patrice Béghain, "nothing but order, stiffness and symmetry".

Description

The painting presents a woman seen from the front. Her brown hair is carefully ordered by a parting in the middle, while a red ribbon hangs from either side of her hairstyle. Her nose is straight, the lips tight, and she gazes towards the viewer very seriously. The woman is dressed in a black dress topped with a white lace wimple, leaving her shoulders bare, while a bouquet of violets is hanging in the middle of her chest. Around her neck shines a gold necklace ending with a emerald pendant and an eagle. The woman's hands are resting on top of each other on the ledge of a theater box, with a wedding ring highlighted adorning the ring finger of her left hand, while the other hand partially covers a theater bezel.Sarah E. Betzer, ''Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History'', The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012, pp. 125-127

References

Sources

*Patrice Béghain, ''Inconnues célèbres. Regards sur trente portraits du musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon'', Stéphane Bachès. {{DEFAULTSORT:Portrait of Madame Oudiné 1840 paintings Paintings by Hippolyte Flandrin Oudiné Oudiné Paintings in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon