Portrait de Madame de Staël

This Portrait of Madame de Staël from 1800 at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull depicts the celebrated writer and intellectual who was Napoleon's most formidable literary opponent, the author of Corinne and On Germany whose salon at Coppet became the center of European Romantic thought. Painted when Ingres was just twenty and had recently left David's studio, this early portrait already shows his ability to capture the intelligence and force of personality of his sitters, qualities that de Staël possessed in extraordinary measure. Her intellectual power and the literary and philosophical salons she hosted made her one of the most influential figures in European culture of the early nineteenth century, and Napoleon eventually exiled her from France in 1804. Ingres's oil surfaces were still developing at this date, but the characteristic precision and psychological acuity that would mark his mature portraits are already present. The Ferens Art Gallery in Hull holds this as an unusual document of the young Ingres's encounter with one of the period's most formidable intellectual presences.

The portrait presents the famous writer with Ingres's developing technique. The careful observation of the sitter's animated features anticipates the penetrating characterization of his mature portraits.