The Frick Collection Co-Publishes Regarding Ingres: Fourteen Short Stories

Inspired by Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville Book cover of "Regarding Ingres"

 

 

'Regarding Ingres' (Rizzoli)/ Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville, 1845, The Frick Collection

 

New York (February 6, 2023)—One of the most celebrated paintings in The Frick Collection, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville, has inspired a new book of short stories to be published next month by Rizzoli Electa in association with the Frick. The stories in Regarding Ingres: Fourteen Short Stories were written by talented graduate students in New York University’s Creative Writing Program. Best-selling author and NYU professor Darin Strauss served as their faculty advisor and contributed the book’s introduction.

 

Comments Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of the Frick, “We are so proud to welcome fresh perspectives on works in our collection, and this collaboration with emerging fiction writers from NYU has been a deeply rewarding project. This collection of stories is sure to bring renewed attention to a particularly beloved work in our holdings.” Adds Strauss, “It’s thrilling to see the great work of an Old Master reinterpreted in adventurous new work by young writers.”

 

Both Ingres’s painting and the stories take their inspiration from Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Comtesse d’Haussonville, who came of age in an aristocratic and highly educated family and had the unique distinction of being the daughter, sister, spouse, and mother of four members of the French Academy. She was herself an author, penning multiple biographies—including ones of Lord Byron and the Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet—and was married to Joseph de Cléron, a diplomat, historian, and writer. Her maternal grandmother, Madame de Staël, was a celebrated Romantic novelist and political theorist.

 

In the portrait, Ingres presents the countess as if she has just returned home from a night at the opera. He strategically arranges her luxurious effects—opera glasses, shawl, visiting cards, gold-and-turquoise jewelry—to capture one moment from a cultured, privileged life. These objects and other details serve as the starting point for the fourteen stories, which range from a gothic tale to a mythologized afterlife to a present-day ghost story. They transport the countess—and the reader—to disparate places: Poland, Brazil, the Amalfi Coast, New York City, and a heaven populated solely by Black people.

 

Over the years, the Frick has inspired a number of literary responses, from the allusion to Rembrandt’s Polish Rider in Frank O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke with You” to references to Vermeer’s Girl Interrupted at Her Music in Susanna Kaysen’s memoir Girl, Interrupted to Fiona Davis’s historical novel The Magnolia Palace. Looking to explore a single work of art through a new collection of fiction, Michaelyn Mitchell, the Frick’s Editor in Chief, conceived Regarding Ingres as something of a follow-up to The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick (2021), an anthology of personal musings by cultural luminaries. In October 2021, students from Strauss’s Craft of Fiction class visited Frick Madison for an after-hours encounter with Ingres’s portrait and an illuminating curatorial presentation; they submitted their stories at semester’s end, three months later.

 

The stories are written by Mathis Clément, Najee Fareed, Nina Ferraz, Omer Friedlander, Amir Hall, Anushka Joshi, Christopher Linnix, Madeline McFarland, Jonathan Perry, Isabelle Philippe, Eric Rubeo, Erin Townsend, Devon Walker-Figueroa, and Alanna Weissman.

 

An event celebrating the book’s publication will be held at NYU’s Washington Square campus on Friday, March 31, at 5:00 p.m., hosted by Strauss and featuring several of the contributing writers. Admission is free, but RSVP is required. 

https://as.nyu.edu/departments/cwp/reading-series/spring-2023/regarding-ingres--a-reading.html

 

 

REGARDING INGRES: A READING

FRIDAY, MAR 31 2023 5:00pm - 7:00pm

The Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House (58 West 10 Street)

 

A reading by contributors to Regarding Ingres: Fourteen Stories, an anthology of newly commissioned texts from the NYU Creative Writing Program MFA students that pay homage to Jean-August-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville from 1845, one of the Frick’s most celebrated paintings. With opening remarks by Darin Strauss, faculty adviser for the project and author of the book’s introduction, and Michaelyn Mitchell, editor-in-chief of the Frick Collection. 

 

Open to the public. All attendees are required to RSVP in advance; please click here.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfeF8QqmNMO3x-w7_Srzl6_axeIJbY2kWZXv7YVIr82WY547Q/viewform?usp=send_form

 

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COVID-19 Protocol

 

Masks are optional. All attendees must be in compliance with NYU’s COVID-19 vaccination requirements (fully vaccinated and boosted, once eligible and by NYU’s deadline). Visitors (i.e. anyone who is not a current NYU student or employee) should be prepared to present proof of compliance and a government-issued ID if asked to do so. NYU students and employees should be prepared to show a Violet Go pass and an NYU ID. 

 

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The Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House is wheelchair accessible with at least two weeks advance notice; for this or any other accommodations, please call the Creative Writing Program at 212.998.8816 or email creative.writing@nyu.edu. 

 

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Darin Strauss is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than it Hurts You,  the memoir Half a Life, and most recently the acclaimed novel, The Queen of Tuesday : A Lucille Ball Story (Random House, 2020). Strauss is the recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim, an American Library Association Award, and numerous other prizes. His books have been named New York Times Notable Books, Entertainment Weekly Must Books of the Year, and Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Books of the Year, among others. He teaches at New York University.