Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

About the Artwork

This portrait of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), one of the most admired painters in France at the time the image was made, is an early example of celebrity photography. Made by Victor Laisné, this print exemplifies his ambitious attempts at commercial paper negative portraiture. Unembellished and direct, the composition portrays Ingres in profile, revealing the upper three-quarters of his figure. Little is known about Laisné and his brief photographic career in the early 1850s. He contributed a number of images of noted artists to an ambitious project-Théophile Silvestre's Portraits des artistes vivants et reproductions de leurs principaux ouvrages par la photographie [Portraits of living artists and reproduction of their principal works through photography](1853).

Exhibition history

19th-Century French Portrait Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 27-August 9, 2000). France at the Dawn of Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 4, 2009-January 24, 2010).

Quick Overview

Artist: Victor Laisné (French, 1825–1897)
Date: 1852
Medium: salted paper print from a paper negative
Dimensions: Image: 20.8 x 15.9 cm (8 3/16 x 6 1/4 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.)
Type: Photograph
Classification: Photograph
Department: Photography
Credit line: Gift of Susan Herzig and Paul Hertzmann, in memory of Robert P. Bergman
Accession no.: 1999.272

Provenance

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s open-access data does not include an ownership history for this work. See the museum’s page for this work.

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.