Marcotte d'Argenteuil

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

National Gallery of Art

Shown from about the waist up, a man with pale, peachy skin, wearing a marine-blue greatcoat over several layers of clothing, looks out at us in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s body is angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his dark brown, hooded eyes. He has an oval face with a slightly jutting chin, a long, straight nose, and his full-lipped mouth is lightly pursed. He is lit from our left, casting the right ear and side of his face in shadow. His chestnut-brown, wavy hair is short, and brushed forward over the ear we can see. Several shirts and coats are layered over his shoulders. Closest to his skin, a high-collared white shirt, with points reaching past his jawline, is tied with a wide, black neckcloth. Next is a custard-yellow garment, also with a high-neck, perhaps a vest. Over that he wears a brown coat with wide, pointed lapels. A bright, scarlet-red oval is fastened to one buttonhole on the lapel to our right, and a gold and rose-pink ornament peeks out from the bottom hem at his waist. Finally, the blue greatcoat has an elbow-length cape, and nearly falls off his shoulders. Fabric across the back of the collar is a hood lined with dark silver satin. He props his left elbow, to our right, on a table or ledge, and that wide cuff is rolled back over the white edge of this shirt. He wears a gold band on the pinky finger of that hand. The ledge is draped with a deep, marmalade-orange cloth. Gold tassels dangling from the end of a scrolled, bound document hangs off the edge of the ledge, near the man’s wrist. The background deepens from sage green along the lower left edge of the painting to fawn brown around the man’s head. The artist signed and dated the lower right corner, “Ingres. Pinx. Rom. 1810.”