In Pasadena, a new face to watch

First a Vermeer. Next an Ingres.

The Norton Simon Museum recently unveiled a luminous painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of a bicoastal art exchange. “A Lady Writing,” one of only 35 Vermeers known to have survived, will remain on view in Pasadena through Feb. 2. But the museum is already looking forward to its first loan from another East Coast partner.

That will be “Comtesse d’Haussonville,” a three-quarter-length portrait by French Neoclassicist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres from the Frick Collection in New York. The image of a dark-haired woman in a blue silk gown, accompanied by two preparatory drawings, will be displayed at the Simon from Oct. 28, 2009, through Jan. 24, 2010.

Ingres was a leading artist of his day (1780-1867) whose portraits reveal his skill at draftsmanship and love of sensuous beauty. In the Frick picture, a 51 7/8 -by-36 1/4 -inch oil on canvas, he depicted the 27-year-old Louise-Albertine de Broglie in what Frick curator Colin B. Bailey calls “a tour de force of verism.” Ingres spent six months on the painting and was delighted by its favorable reception, Bailey said -- particularly a politician’s note to the sitter stating, “M. Ingres must be in love with you to have painted you this way.”

The Simon Museum lent a Rembrandt to the National Gallery last year and planned to send five paintings to the Frick in October, but that show was postponed. Instead, Jacopo Bassano’s “Flight Into Egypt,” Peter Paul Rubens’ “Holy Women at the Sepulchre,” Guercino’s “Aldrovandi Dog,” Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s “Birth of St. John the Baptist” and Francisco de Zurbaran’s “Still Life With Lemons, Oranges and a Rose” will be on view in New York from Feb. 10 through May 10.

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suzanne.muchnic@latimes.com