''Portrait of Marie-Françoise Rivière'' (also known as ''Portrait of Madame Rivière'', or ''la Femme au châle'') is a c. 1805 oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( ; ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...

.Rosenblum, 56 Madame Rivière, born Marie-Françoise-Jacquette-Bibiane Blot de Beauregard, and known as Sabine, married Philibert Rivière de L'Isle, an influential court official in the Napoleonic Empire,Pollitt, Ben.
Ingres, Portrait of Madame Rivière
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Khan Academy Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by Sal Khan. Its goal is to create a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short video lessons. Its website also includes suppl ...

, 2016. Retrieved 1 October 2017 who commissioned this work, along with portraits of

himself A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its Antecedent (grammar), antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and ref ...

and their daughter, Caroline.Rosenblum, 54 The painting is composed from white, chilly blue, beige and

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colou ...

colours. It has an overall, deliberately flat and shadow-less appearance.Conisbee, 62 The portrait has been described as having "an ambiance of female voluptuousness, ndpampered femininity". Seated on a blue cushion or sofa, Sabine, then in her mid-30s, wears a low-cut and wide necked prom dress, with a high waist and short sleeves, a cream colored chiffon, and a cashmere

shawl A shawl (from ''shāl'') is a simple item of clothing, loosely worn over the shoulders, upper body and arms, and sometimes also over the head. It is usually a rectangular piece of Textile, cloth, but can also be Square (geometry), square or tr ...

.Madame Riviere, 1806: the Antique and the East
.

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

. Retrieved 1 October 2017 He black hair is arranged in curls. The painting shocked critics when exhibited at the 1808

Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment that provides Cosmetics, cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, ...

, particularly they were perplexed at the illogical and unnatural anatomy.The portrait of Caroline was far better received A point of focus was her deliberately elongated right arm. The technique however was to become a hallmark on Ingres' female portraits, in this case the arm is lengthened to rhyme with the curve of the oval frame. There has been speculation as to why their son Paul was not portrayed and the background to the commission is unclear. Philibert Rivière was likely impressed by the painter's 1804 ''

Bonaparte, First Consul ''Bonaparte, First Consul'' (''Bonaparte, Premier Consul'') is an 1804 portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The painting is now in the collection of the Curtius Museum in Liège. Posing the hand in ...

''; his own portrait echoes the emperor's pose. Unusually for Ingres, no preparatory drawings are known. Ingres' never saw the three Rivière paintings after the 1808 Salon, he tried to find and reunite them for an 1855 exhibition, but all the sitters had died (Caroline in 1807, Philibert in 1816, and Sabine in 1848), and could not determine the location of the canvasses. As it turned out they had been in the Paris collection of Paul Rivière. They were eventually bequeathed to the nation in 1870, three years after Ingres' own death.Conisbee, 64

Notes

Sources

* Rosenblum, Robert. ''Ingres''. London: Harry N. Abrams, 1990. *Conisbee, Philip. ''Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. {{Authority control Portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1805 paintings Artworks exhibited at the Salon of 1806

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