Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 11, 2016
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin is an 1832 oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It depicts Louis-François Bertin (1766–1841), a writer, art collector and director of the pro-royalist Journal des débats. Having achieved acclaim as a history painter, Ingres accepted portrait commissions with reluctance, regarding them as a distraction. The painting had a prolonged genesis; he agonised over the pose and made several preparatory sketches. The final work presents Bertin as a personification of the commercially minded leaders of the liberal reign of Louis Philippe I, emanating a restless energy. He is physically imposing and self-assured but his real-life personality shines through – warm, wry and engaging to those who had earned his trust. The portrait is an unflinchingly realistic depiction of aging; Ingres emphasises the furrowed skin and thinning hair of an overweight man who maintains his resolve and determination. Although Bertin's family worried that the painting might be seen as a caricature, it is widely regarded as Ingres' finest male portrait and has been at the Musée du Louvre since 1897. (Full article...)