Portrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre Granger

Portrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre Granger

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This large scale study was presumably a preparatory work for a lost or never executed portrait. It depicts the painter's god-daughter, Palmyre Meurice (1819-1874), known to her friends and family as 'Myrette'. Her father, the Neoclassical painter Jean-Pierre Granger, was a close friend of Ingres' and she herself studied art, and would go on to become a renowned musician. She married the writer Paul Meurice in 1843 and counted Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo among her close friends. Holding what appears to be a flower, the sitter faces the viewer directly. The frontality of her pose, along with her steady gaze, suggests a mature and accomplished woman. Using a dark graphite, Ingres has gone over the lines repeatedly, establishing the sinuous contours characteristic of his style. Her features are rendered with clarity, in a decidedly more delicate technique. Perrin Stein (July, 2017)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre GrangerPortrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre GrangerPortrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre GrangerPortrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre GrangerPortrait of Madame Paul Meurice, née Palmyre Granger

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.