Picasso in the mirror of Ingres
From 3 June to 9 October 2022, the National Gallery, London presents "Picasso Ingres: Face to Face", an exhibition showing Pablo Picasso's "Woman with a Book" (1932) alongside the work that inspired it, "Madame Moitessier" (1856) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
Image: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, "Madame Moitessier", 1856 © The National Gallery, London / Pablo Picasso, "Woman with a Book", 1932. The Norton Simon Foundation © Succession Picasso/DACS 2021 / photo The Norton Simon Foundation
Perhaps the most important figure of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso was by no means alien to the European artistic tradition from which at many points (through Cubism and the incorporation of African art) he sought to break away from. Throughout his career, Picasso was “inspired” -to put it elegantly- by many of the old masters, resulting in such well-known works as his "Meninas" based on the famous painting by Velázquez, or "The Women of Algiers", the reinterpretation of Delacroix's series of works, the final version of which broke auction records when it came up for sale in 2015.
Back in 2004, the Musée Picasso in Paris devoted an exhibition to Ingres's influence on the Spanish painter, with special attention to the artist's interest in “Le bain turc”, the painting by Ingres that Picasso admired at the Ingres museum in Montauban. And last year, the Palacio de Carlos V in Granada presented "Odaliscas. From Ingres to Picasso", showing how Ingres' imprint is evident in paintings such as "Nude Woman with a Turkish Cap", painted by Picasso in 1955. Now, the National Gallery in London puts the spotlight on "Woman with a Book", one of the portraits painted by Picasso in his "magic year" of 1932, along with "Madame Moitessier" (1856) the painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres that inspired Picasso's work.
"Picasso was a passionate student of European painting with a voracious memory for images," explained Christopher Riopelle, curator of painting after 1800 at the National Gallery. "He constantly pitted himself against the masters he most admired, among them Ingres. Beguiled by the voluptuous Marie-Thérèse Walter, for Picasso 1932 was one of the most inventive and productive years of his long career. Perhaps it is no surprise that the memory of Ingres’s opulent, regal and strange 'Madame Moitessier', wondered at in an exhibition eleven years earlier, should so powerfully impose itself anew on Picasso’s imagination". The National Gallery explains that Ingres spent 12 years completing the portrait of Madame Moitessier, during which time the painting underwent numerous changes and revisions, including the inclusion and subsequent erasure of the sitter's daughter. Pointing to the direct influence of the portrait on Picasso's work, the gallery notes that "her reflection in the mirror was a startling invention to show a different side of her, but closer inspection of the mirror reveals some oddities. The reflection is not entirely consistent with her actual position. It also lacks the detail and luminosity of the figure, its dull surface contrasting with the opulence of Madame Moitessier and her surroundings. This complex and ambiguous invention suggesting simultaneous points of view would have an impact in the 20th century, and not only on Picasso."

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