Two celebrated belles of mid-19th-century Parisian society were Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville, and Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, Princesse de Broglie. They were “les belles-sœurs,” sisters-in-law, and each was immortalized in a spectacular portrait by the renowned French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. These paintings now reside, respectively, at The Frick Collection and The Metropolitan Museum of Art and are emblematic of their institutions, frequently used as publicity images, and beloved by visitors.
The Captivating Countess
In the early 1840s, Ingres was asked to paint the Countess d’Haussonville. At first, he was reluctant to do so, as he was tired of making portraits and instead was keen to focus on more ambitious, grand-scale paintings. However, he found his subject irresistible and her family’s power and status persuasive, so he accepted the commission. The countess was a charming and highly intelligent woman, the granddaughter of celebrated salon hostess and writer Madame de Staël, and herself an accomplished writer, watercolorist, and musician.
Ingres depicts the countess in her luxuriously appointed boudoir. She leans against an upholstered fireplace and appears to have just returned from a night at the opera. Opera glasses and an evening bag lie on the mantel, and her discarded wrap sits on a chair. These accoutrements and the room’s furnishings are as elegantly depicted as the sitter.
The work is a symphony of blues with accents of rich, warm reds and yellows—all created by seamless, precise brushwork. Her gold bracelet and ring are set with turquoise, bringing in another shade of blue. Her snake-shaped ring is in a style known as “à la Cléopatre.” Egyptomania swept France following Napoleon’s turn-of-the-century Egyptian campaign and continued throughout the 19th century and beyond, notably influential in the jewelry arts.
The Pious Princess
The grand success of the countess’s portrait inspired her brother, Albert de Broglie, to commission the artist to paint his own wife a few years into their marriage. History repeated itself: Initially, Ingres was reluctant, then he relented, and the resulting portrait was received with praise and hailed as a masterpiece.
The highly respected young Princess de Broglie was famously shy, a pious Catholic, and author of several Christian volumes. Ingres, in what was to be his penultimate portrait, shows her piety via the cross pattée design on her necklace’s gold pendant. The pendant itself is shaped like a bulla, an ancient Roman protective amulet. It may have been made by the Roman jeweler Fortunato Pio Castellani, who started the archeological revival jewelry style in the mid-19th century, or by the French jewelry house Mellerio dits Meller, founded in the 17th century and the oldest extant jewelry house in the world. Ingres personally selected the pearl necklace the princess wore, precisely arranging its graceful drape. These jewels, along with the portrait’s seed pearl earrings and ruby and diamond bracelet, remained in the princess’s family for generations.
Key compositional elements in the painting of the countess are similarly found in the princess’s portrait. Blue, again, dominates the canvas, in the form of her exquisite satin ball gown, but here it is an icy shade whose coolness is offset by the silky golden chair. The large crinoline underskirt acts like armor to prevent the viewer from getting too close to the shy and inscrutable woman.
In this highly personalized setting, the princess is elegantly posed leaning against an object, this time a chair laden with a gold embroidered shawl, mother-of-pearl fan, gloves, and a black velvet cape trimmed with fringe, jet beads, and feathers. Ingres brandishes his virtuosic painterly skill in these magnificently rendered realistic elements. The painting’s realism is balanced by deceptively flattened and elongated forms.
Kathryn Calley Galitz, a scholar of late 18th- and early 19th-century French art, wrote, “The virtuoso rendering of the multiple folds of her silk skirt, the tufted damask chair, and the marabou feathers of her hair ornament counter the mannered elongation of her arms, her seemingly boneless fingers, and her idealized face.”
Museum ‘Poster Girl’
Both “Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d’Haussonville “and “Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn (1825–1860), Princesse de Broglie” stayed in their families’ possession into the 20th century. During this time, the portraits were occasionally displayed in exhibitions, and these viewings inspired famous artists and the public alike. After the death of the countess’s youngest child, her portrait entered The Frick Collection via the Wildenstein gallery in 1927. The picture has since graced the cover of “Life” magazine and is colloquially known as the “Poster Girl” of The Frick. The princess’s portrait descended through her family until it too was sold through Wildenstein to the American banker Robert Lehman, who bequeathed his art collection to The Met in 1958.
