The Architect Charles-Victor Famin
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres French
Not on view
About a year after he assumed the directorship of the French Academy at the Villa Medici in Rome, Ingres drew this portrait of a newly arrived student of architecture, Charles-Victor Famin (1809-1910). Ingres knew Famin’s father from their student days in the Italian capital and it was likely as a gesture of friendship that he portrayed the young man, who, ultimately, did not distinguish himself professionally. In his reports to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Ingres described him as "definitely an idler ... who failed to fulfill his obligations." Although Famin holds his drafting pencil in hand, the portrait has a casual quality characteristic of Ingres’s more informal approach to portrait drawing during this phase of his career.
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