Portrait of Charles-Joseph-Laurent Cordier 1811

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painted this portrait of Charles-Joseph-Laurent Cordier in oil on canvas. As a leading portraitist in France, Ingres represents Cordier as a man of status, with the visual cues of wealth and power that his patrons would have expected. The Order of the Legion of Honour on his lapel and the fob watch are markers of Cordier’s high standing within French society. And yet, Ingres places his sitter in a landscape setting, alluding to the influence of Romanticism, a movement which challenged the established conventions of academic painting. From our perspective today, the painting's significance lies in its reflection of the social codes and aspirations of the French elite in the early 19th century. Historical archives, fashion studies, and records of the Legion of Honour can help us to understand the social position of both painter and sitter. The historian’s role is to interpret such artworks as products of their time, embedded in specific institutional and social contexts.