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Ingres
Degas, the greatest draftsman of his generation, revered Ingres, the uncontested master of line, as a god. He collected works by Ingres with a passion that was truly obsessive. As a young man, he briefly met the aged Ingres, and the encounter remained vivid decades later. Ingres reputedly told him to "study line...draw lots of line, either from memory or from nature." Degas's friend George Moore remembered that "there was a time when [Degas] knew everyone who owned an Ingres, and it is said that the concierges used to keep him informed as to the health of the owners of certain pictures....Hearing of an appendicitis that might prove fatal...Degas flapped his wings and went away like a vulture."
In all he acquired some twenty paintings and eighty-eight drawings by Ingres, ranging from great portraits to more informal and intimate studies. In addition to purchasing every work that he could possibly afford, he arranged to have photographs taken of those that he could not obtain and carefully mounted them in the album displayed in this room. He also kept a notebook entitled "Notes on Ingres," in which he recorded everything he knew about works that might become available. In 1911, when Degas was old and blind, he asked to be taken to an exhibition of Ingres's works so that he might caress the pictures he could no longer see.M
Jacques-Louis Leblanc (1774-1846), 1823
Madame Jacques-Louis Leblanc, née Françoise Poncelle (1788-1839), 1823
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