Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville
The Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville is an 1845 oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The sitter was Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville, of the wealthy House of Broglie. The Princesse de Broglie, whom Ingres later portrayed c. 1851–53, was married to Louise's brother Albert de Broglie, the French monarchist politician, diplomat and writer. Highly educated, Louise de Broglie was later an essayist and biographer, and published historical romance novels based on the lives of Lord Byron, Robert Emmett and Margaret of Valois. The painting is one of the few portrait commissions Ingres accepted at the time, as he was more interested in Neoclassical subject matter, which to his frustration was a far less lucrative source of income than portraiture. He had made a preparatory sketch and had begun an oil and canvas version two years earlier, but abandoned the commission when de Broglie became pregnant and was no longer able to pose for the long periods he required, and she had anyway found interminable and "boring". The final work is signed and dated at the lower left. Commission By 1845 Ingres' fame was at its height, and he was much in demand as a portraitist. While lucrative,