Permanent Collection: Ingres' Madame Moitessier

I like to look on as female politicians plan particular strategies for gaining women’s support. Often, they turn to criticizing size-zero models, as if a remark that digs into the skinny ribs of undernourished actress-model-whatevers will secure solidarity in the female voting ranks. In England, one woman now wading into the weight debate is Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, who recently announced a "body-confidence summit" to discuss "skinny celebrities." Hers is a familiar refrain: skin-tight stars make us sad and hack at our self-esteem, so Featherstone feels us women need more curvy role models. She picks out and praises Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as ‘absolutely fabulous’.

Now, I’m all for a bit more meat on our role models’ bones but don’t you too find Featherstone’s stance just a pinch patronizing? Further, I think Lynne has overlooked an important thing: Hendricks’s bombshell figure, all super-shapely hourglass and killer cleavage balanced atop slim pins, is about as unachievable as a catwalk stalker’s. Featherstone might find more fortifying poster girls at the National Gallery of Art, where there is a freer, less forced feting of the female form, in all its shapes and sizes. Just look at Ingres, whose velvety, voluptuous Madame Moitessier lifts and nips the curvilinear character of her body-type into a life-size celebration of womanly beauty.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 - 1867) found fame as a champion of the classical tradition in France. He trained briefly with David (the leading artist of the Neoclassical movement in France) and topped that off with nearly twenty years in Italy. In a long and successful career, Ingres stuck to his principles of classical art: they play out here in this portrait of Madame Moitessier (the daughter of a wealthy government official) who stands grandly before us in three-quarter length. There’s evidence of detailed draughtsmanship underpinning the picture and you can see the painter’s preference for the highly finished surface. Ingres famously stated that a paint surface should be as smooth as “the skin of an onion." I can only imagine he ate some super slick onions in his time because I can detect nary a single brushstroke on this painting.