Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 - 1867) was a French painter and draughtsman, the leading exponent of Neoclassicism in France in the first half of the nineteenth century. [1] A pupil of Jacques-Louis David, he became known for the precision of his line, for portraits such as Monsieur Bertin, and for nudes including La Grande Odalisque and The Turkish Bath. [2] He regarded himself as a painter of history but is now valued above all as a portraitist.
Early life and training
Ingres was born on 29 August 1780 in Montauban in southern France, the son of a decorative painter and sculptor who gave him his first instruction in drawing and in music. [1] He studied at the academy in Toulouse from the age of eleven and played violin in the city's orchestra, an accomplishment that gave rise to the French expression violon d'Ingres for a serious hobby.
In 1797 he moved to Paris and entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David, the dominant painter of the Revolutionary period. He won the Prix de Rome in 1801, but the exhausted state of French finances delayed his departure, and he did not reach the French Academy in Rome until 1806. [4]
Italy
Ingres remained in Italy for eighteen years, first in Rome and from 1820 in Florence. [1] Works sent back to the Paris Salon, including The Valpinçon Bather and La Grande Odalisque, were criticised by reviewers for their elongated anatomy and flattened space, and for the Gothic and archaic sources he drew upon. [2] He supported himself in this period largely by producing finely worked pencil portraits of visitors on the Grand Tour, drawings now regarded as among the finest in the medium.
Return to France and public success
The reception of The Vow of Louis XIII at the Salon of 1824 reversed his fortunes, and Ingres returned to Paris as a celebrated figure. [1] He was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, opened a large teaching studio, and was cast by critics as the champion of drawing and classical order against the colour and movement of Eugène Delacroix and the Romantics. [4]
He completed The Apotheosis of Homer for a ceiling in the Louvre in 1827 and, in 1832, the portrait of the newspaper proprietor Louis-François Bertin, whose forceful physical presence made it one of the most admired portraits of the century. [3] After the poor reception of another history painting he accepted the directorship of the French Academy in Rome, which he held from 1835 to 1841, reforming its teaching and its facilities.
Late work and death
Returning to Paris, Ingres received official honours, was made a senator in 1862, and continued to paint portraits of society women, among them the two versions of Madame Moitessier. [1] In 1862, at the age of eighty-two, he completed The Turkish Bath, a circular composition of bathing women assembled from motifs he had used throughout his career. He died in Paris on 14 January 1867.
Legacy
Ingres bequeathed the contents of his studio to his native Montauban, where they form the collection of the museum that bears his name. [1] Although he presented himself as the guardian of classical tradition, his willingness to stretch and simplify the body for expressive effect was studied closely by Degas, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso, making him an unexpected point of departure for modern painting. [2]
