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Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, Portrait of Marie Legentil, 1857. Getty Museum |
The Getty Museum has purchased
husband-and-wife portraits by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809–1864). Depicting
Alexandre Félix Legentil and
Marie Marcotte d'Argentuil, they were auctioned as separate lots at Christie's in Nov. 2024, selling for a modest 69,300 euros each. Dealer Daniel Katz bought both and had them cleaned, revealing
significantly brighter colors and clearer details. According to the auction house, the portraits have not been shown in public since 1865, at the artist's memorial exhibition in Paris. Both paintings are about 42 by 34 in. and retain original matching frames.
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| Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, Portrait of Alexandre Legentil, 1858. Getty Museum |
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| Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, 1842–1849. Church of Saint Germain-des-Prés, Paris |
Flandrin was Ingres' pupil, and like his master, he disdained portraiture as unworthy of his talents. Flandrin preferred painting church murals in a neo-Renaissance style, earning him the unlikely nickname "the French Fra Angelico." He was an influence on the British Pre-Raphaelite movement, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt praising Flandrin's murals for the Church of Saint German-des-Prés, Paris, as the most "perfect" paintings they had seen. Ironically Flandrin is best known today for his early Study (Young Male Nude Seated Besides the Sea), a painting that has become an icon of homoerotic art. The figure's enigmatic pose has been copied by generations of LGBT photographers such as Frederick Holland Day, Baron von Gloeden, Claude Cahun, and Robert Mapplethorpe.
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| Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, Study (Young Male Nude Seated Besides the Sea), 1835–1836. Louvre |
It was nonetheless portraits that paid the bills. Alexandre Legentil was a department store heir, philanthropist, church benefactor, and translator of St. Thomas Aquinas. Ingres did portrait drawings of the businessman and his wife Marie, who was active in educational philanthropies. Flandrin's painting of Marie incorporates Ingres' mix of icy reserve and deluxe textures—lace, satin, fur, pearls, diamonds. Marie's portrait was shown by itself at the Salon to acclaim. The picture of Alexandre is dated the following year.
There are only a few Flandrin paintings in U.S. museums. The museums of Cleveland and Detroit have portraits, of which Cleveland's is notably urbane. LACMA has a small Sacrifice of Isaac, an oil sketch for a mural in Saint Germain-des-Prés.
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| Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, René-Charles Dassy and His Brother Jean-Baptiste-Claude-Amédé Dassy, 1850. Cleveland Museum of Art |
Ingres remains one of the gaps in the Getty's collection of 19th-century painting. The Flandrin portraits, now on view in gallery W202, bolster a selection of so-called Salon or academic paintings by Winterhalter, Tissot, Millais, and Bouguereau—pictures ultimately rooted in Ingres and his insistence on drawing.
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| Detail of Marie Legentil |
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| Signature on Alexandre Legentil |
Comments
He's pretty perfect with his Vitruvian "Male Nude Seated Besides the Sea" at the Louvre.
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There is a good Flandrin study of a male nude at the Met, oil on paper, laid down on canvas, although the jury is still out as to whether it is the work of Hippolyte's or his brother Paul's, who was himself an accomplished artist.
The Met's Flandrin stayed with the artist's family until 1995.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438652
However, old-time portrait paintings (such as in the main gallery of the Huntington), and also as the case with lots of works in the abstract/non-representational category too, may trigger the feeling of a little going a long way.
Even though I often slag on contemporary art, walking through a Broad Museum may be analogous to chewing bubble gum (or eating ice cream), while perusing a Louvre is analogous to taking cod-liver oil.
However, the former tends to attract fewer visitors than the latter. Although London's Tate Modern or Paris's Pompidou do draw in big crowds.
>it's a relief to see one about a work from the 19th century.
^Actually, disregard that comment.
LACMA is a "de facto contemporary art museum but not a very good one."
Sorry, I didn't take my meds.
In 1958, the Getty Museum was still two rooms in J. Paul's house (Pacific Palisades). Some holes in the Getty's collection are now permanent.
--- J. Garcin
> Getty's collection
> are now permanent.
That's a given. Moreover, several years ago it was made worse when the museum was being managed (and mis-managed) by Barry Munitz.
The Getty shows a big budget doesn't make up for bad decision-making, if not outright unethical behavior----Munitz reportedly did some underhanded things.
LACMA shows a small budget is made even worse by bad decision-making & non-transparent behavior----Michael Govan has played games with facts, statistics.
To respond to a previous comment: I think Norton Simon bought his great Ingres portrait after 1958. And there are still at least several excellent Ingres portraits in private hands, according to Wikipedia. Including the Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples and the Portrait of Hippolyte-François Devillers. But don’t worry too much because these portraits by Flandern look lovely.
And the dilettante East-coast collections in the US, too, will never have the precious treasure of scores of collections in Europe. Centuries before the Met existed, the Vatican, and pan-nationalist dynasties like the Hapsburgs, and countless noble houses vacuumed up greatness in European art, never to cross the Atlantic.
The problem is that many commentators here, who are unschooled in art history, discount what our collections DO have. Sad, and discouraging.
Re "The Resnicks have promised another Ingres, a Virgin with the Host.": I wonder if this is one of the 5 variants based on the painting executed on commission for the Russian czarevitch, the future Alexander II, in 1841 (Coll. State Pushkin Museum, Moscow)?
The Met's specimen is held to be the first of the variants, from 1852:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438434
Per their web page:
"The remaining four were completed in 1854 (Wildenstein 1956, no. 276; Musée d'Orsay, Paris; begun in 1851); 1859 (W 289, whereabouts unknown); 1860 (W 296; sold, Sotheby's, New York, October 26, 2004, no. 61); and 1866 (W 325; Musée Bonnat, Bayonne)."
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I presume the Resnick specimen is the one sold in 2004.
What’s happened with the Flemish collection over the past few years is amazing. That wasn’t planned, opportunity just knocked. But these Flandrins, they’ll spend most of their time in storage. That broke the streak. I can’t imagine seeing them at a fair booth and thinking, we’ve got to get those.
It’s always better to focus on what they have rather than what they don’t. The collection is great fun and has its own character.