Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres | |
---|---|
Born | Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 29 August 1780 |
Died | 14 January 1867 Paris, France | (aged 86)
Known for | Painting, drawing |
Notable work |
|
Movement | Neoclassicism Orientalism |
Spouse | Madeleine Chapelle |
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (
Born into a modest family in
He was finally recognized at the Salon in 1824, when his Raphaelesque painting, The Vow of Louis XIII, was met with acclaim, and Ingres was acknowledged as the leader of the Neoclassical school in France. Although the income from commissions for history paintings allowed him to paint fewer portraits, his Portrait of Monsieur Bertin marked his next popular success in 1833. The following year, his indignation at the harsh criticism of his ambitious composition The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian caused him to return to Italy, where he assumed directorship of the French Academy in Rome in 1835. He returned to Paris for good in 1841. In his later years he painted new versions of many of his earlier compositions, a series of designs for stained glass windows, several important portraits of women, and The Turkish Bath, the last of his several Orientalist paintings of the female nude, which he finished at the age of 83.
Early years: Montauban and Toulouse
Ingres was born in Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne, France, the first of seven children (five of whom survived infancy) of Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres (1755–1814) and his wife Anne Moulet (1758–1817). His father was a successful jack-of-all-trades in the arts, a painter of miniatures, sculptor, decorative stonemason, and amateur musician; his mother was the nearly illiterate daughter of a master wigmaker.[2] From his father the young Ingres received early encouragement and instruction in drawing and music, and his first known drawing, a study after an antique cast, was made in 1789.[3] Starting in 1786, he attended the local school École des Frères de l'Éducation Chrétienne, but his education was disrupted by the turmoil of the French Revolution, and the closing of the school in 1791 marked the end of his conventional education. The deficiency in his schooling would always remain for him a source of insecurity.[4]
In 1791, Joseph Ingres took his son to Toulouse, where the young Jean-Auguste-Dominique was enrolled in the Académie Royale de Peinture, Sculpture et Architecture. There he studied under the sculptor Jean-Pierre Vigan, the landscape painter Jean Briant, and the neoclassical painter Guillaume-Joseph Roques. Roques' veneration of Raphael was a decisive influence on the young artist.[5] Ingres won prizes in several disciplines, such as composition, "figure and antique", and life studies.[6] His musical talent was developed under the tutelage of the violinist Lejeune, and from the ages of thirteen to sixteen he played second violin in the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse.[6]
From an early age he was determined to be a history painter, which, in the hierarchy of genres established by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture under Louis XIV, and continued well into the 19th Century, was considered the highest level of painting. He did not want to simply make portraits or illustrations of real life like his father; he wanted to represent the heroes of religion, history and mythology, to idealize them and show them in ways that explained their actions, rivaling the best works of literature and philosophy.[7]
In Paris (1797–1806)
In March 1797, the Academy awarded Ingres first prize in drawing, and in August he traveled to Paris to study in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, France's—and Europe's—leading painter during the revolutionary period, in whose studio he remained for four years. Ingres followed his master's neoclassical example.[8] In 1797 David was working on his enormous masterpiece, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, and was gradually modifying his style away from Roman models of rigorous realism to the ideals of purity, virtue and simplicity in Greek art.[9]
One of the other students of David, Étienne-Jean Delécluze, who later became an art critic, described Ingres as a student:
He was distinguished not just by the candor of his character and his disposition to work alone ... he was one of the most studious ... he took little part in the all the turbulent follies around him, and he studied with more perseverance than most of his co-disciples ... All of the qualities which characterize today the talent of this artist, the finesse of contour, the true and profound sentiment of the form, and a modeling with extraordinary correctness and firmness, could already be seen in his early studies. While several of his comrades and David himself signaled a tendency toward exaggeration in his studies, everyone was struck by his grand compositions and recognized his talent.[10]
He was admitted to the painting department of the École des Beaux-Arts in October 1799. In 1800 and 1801, he won the grand prize for figure painting for his paintings of male torsos.[11]
In 1800 and 1801, he competed for the Prix de Rome, the highest prize of the Academy, which entitled the winner to four years of residence at the French Academy in Rome. He came in second in his first attempt, but in 1801 he took the top prize with The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. The figures of the envoys, in the right of the painting, are muscular and solid as statues, in the style taught by David, but the two main figures on the left, Achilles and Patroclus, are mobile, vivid and graceful, like figures in a delicate bas-relief.[12]
His residence in Rome was postponed until 1806 due to shortage of state funds. In the meantime he worked in Paris alongside several other students of David in a studio provided by the state, and further developed a style that emphasized purity of contour. He found inspiration in the works of Raphael, in Etruscan vase paintings, and in the outline engravings of the English artist John Flaxman.[6] His drawings of Hermaphrodite and the Nymph Salmacis showed a new stylized ideal of female beauty, which would reappear later in his Jupiter et Thetis and his famous nudes.[13]
In 1802 he made his debut at the Salon with Portrait of a Woman (the current whereabouts of which is unknown). Between 1804 and 1806 he painted a series of portraits which were striking for their extreme precision, particularly in the richness of their fabrics and tiny details. These included the Portrait of Philipbert Riviére (1805), Portrait of Sabine Rivière (1805–06), Portrait of Madame Aymon (also known as La Belle Zélie; 1806), and Portrait of Caroline Rivière (1805–06). The female faces were not at all detailed but were softened, and were notable for their large oval eyes and delicate flesh colours and their rather dreamlike expressions. His portraits typically had simple backgrounds of solid dark or light colour, or of sky. These were the beginning of a series that would make him among the most celebrated portrait artists of the 19th century.[14]
As Ingres waited to depart to Rome, his friend Lorenzo Bartolini introduced him to Italian Renaissance paintings, particularly the works of Bronzino and Pontormo, which Napoleon had brought back from his campaign in Italy and placed in the Louvre. Ingres assimilated their clarity and monumentality into his own portrait style. In the Louvre were also masterpieces of Flemish art, including the Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, which the French army had seized during its conquest of Flanders. The precision of Renaissance Flemish art became part of Ingres's style.[15] Ingres's stylistic eclecticism represented a new tendency in art. The Louvre, newly filled with booty seized by Napoleon in his campaigns in Italy and the Low Countries, provided French artists of the early 19th century with an unprecedented opportunity to study, compare, and copy masterworks from antiquity and from the entire history of European painting.[16] As art historian Marjorie Cohn has written: "At the time, art history as a scholarly enquiry was brand-new. Artists and critics outdid each other in their attempts to identify, interpret, and exploit what they were just beginning to perceive as historical stylistic developments."[17] From the beginning of his career, Ingres freely borrowed from earlier art, adopting the historical style appropriate to his subject, and was consequently accused by critics of plundering the past.[17]
In 1803 he received a prestigious commission, being one of five artists selected (along with
In the summer of 1806, Ingres became engaged to Marie-Anne-Julie Forestier, a painter and musician, before leaving for Rome in September. Although he had hoped to stay in Paris long enough to witness the opening of that year's Salon, in which he was to display several works, he reluctantly left for Italy just days before the opening.[20]
Ingres painted a new portrait of Napoleon for presentation at the 1806 Salon, this one showing Napoleon on the Imperial Throne for his coronation. This painting was entirely different from his earlier portrait of Napoleon as First Consul; it concentrated almost entirely on the lavish imperial costume that Napoleon had chosen to wear, and the symbols of power he held. The scepter of Charles V, the sword of Charlemagne the rich fabrics, furs and capes, crown of gold leaves, golden chains and emblems were all presented in extremely precise detail; the Emperor's face and hands were almost lost in the majestic costume.[21]
At the Salon, his paintings—Self-Portrait, portraits of the Rivière family, and How, with so much talent, a line so flawless, an attention to detail so thorough, has M. Ingres succeeded in painting a bad picture? The answer is that he wanted to do something singular, something extraordinary ... M. Ingres's intention is nothing less than to make art regress by four centuries, to carry us back to its infancy, to revive the manner of Jean de Bruges.[23]
Rome and the French Academy (1806–1814)
Newly arrived in Rome, Ingres read with mounting indignation the relentlessly negative press clippings sent to him from Paris by his friends. In letters to his prospective father-in-law, he expressed his outrage at the critics: "So the Salon is the scene of my disgrace; ... The scoundrels, they waited until I was away to assassinate my reputation ... I have never been so unhappy....I knew I had many enemies; I never was agreeable with them and never will be. My greatest wish would be to fly to the Salon and to confound them with my works, which don't in any way resemble theirs; and the more I advance, the less their work will resemble mine."[24] He vowed never again to exhibit at the Salon, and his refusal to return to Paris led to the breaking up of his engagement.[25] Julie Forestier, when asked years later why she had never married, responded, "When one has had the honor of being engaged to M. Ingres, one does not marry."[26]
On 23 November 1806, he wrote to Jean Forestier, the father of his former fiancée, "Yes, art will need to be reformed, and I intend to be that revolutionary."
During his time in Rome he also painted numerous portraits: Madame Duvaucey (1807), François-Marius Granet (1807), Joseph-Antoine Moltedo (1810), Madame Panckoucke (1811), and Charles-Joseph-Laurent Cordier (1811).[32] In 1812 he painted one of his few portraits of an older woman, Comtesse de Tournon, mother of the prefect of Rome.[33] In 1810 Ingres's pension at the Villa Medici ended, but he decided to stay in Rome and seek patronage from the French occupation government.
In 1811 Ingres completed his final student exercise, the immense
Although facing uncertain prospects, in 1813 Ingres married a young woman,
Rome after the Academy and Florence (1814–1824)
After he left the Academy, a few important commissions came to him. The French governor of Rome, General
He traveled to Naples in the spring of 1814 to paint Queen
He continued to produce masterful portraits, in pencil and oils, of almost photographic precision; but with the departure of the French administration, the painting commissions were rare. During this low point of his career, Ingres augmented his income by drawing pencil portraits of the many wealthy tourists, in particular the English, passing through postwar Rome. For an artist who aspired to a reputation as a history painter, this seemed menial work, and to the visitors who knocked on his door asking, "Is this where the man who draws the little portraits lives?", he would answer with irritation, "No, the man who lives here is a painter!"[44] The portrait drawings he produced in such profusion during this period rank today among his most admired works.[45] He is estimated to have made some five hundred portrait drawings, including portraits of his famous friends. His friends included many musicians including Paganini, and he regularly played the violin with others who shared his enthusiasm for Mozart, Haydn, Gluck, and Beethoven.[46]
He also produced a series of small paintings in what was known as the
In 1816 Ingres produced his only
In 1817 the
A commission came in 1816 or 1817 from the descendants of the
He continued to send works to the Salon in Paris, hoping to make his breakthrough there. In 1819 he sent his reclining nude,
In 1820 Ingres and his wife moved to Florence at the urging of the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, an old friend from his years in Paris. He still had to depend upon his portraits and drawings for income, but his luck began to change.[55] His history painting Roger Freeing Angelica was purchased for the private collection of Louis XVIII, and was hung in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, which was newly devoted to the work of living artists. This was the first work of Ingres to enter a museum.[56]
In 1821, he finished a painting commissioned by a childhood friend, Monsieur de Pastoret, The Entry into Paris of the Dauphin, the Future Charles V; de Pastoret also ordered a portrait of himself and a religious work (Virgin with the Blue Veil). In August 1820, with the help of de Pastoret, he received a commission for a major religious painting for the Cathedral of Montauban. The theme was the re-establishment of the bond between the church and the state. Ingres's painting, The Vow of Louis XIII (1824), inspired by Raphael, was purely in the Renaissance style, and depicted King Louis XIII vowing to dedicate his reign to the Virgin Mary. This was perfectly in tune with the doctrine of the new government of the Restoration. He spent four years bringing the large canvas to completion, and he took it to the Paris Salon in October 1824, where it became the key that finally opened the door of the Paris art establishment and to his career as an official painter.[57]
Return to Paris and retreat to Rome (1824–1834)
The Vow of Louis XIII in the Salon of 1824 finally brought Ingres critical success. Although
The success of Ingres's painting led in 1826 to a major new commission, The Apotheosis of Homer, a giant canvas which celebrated all the great artists of history, intended to decorate the ceiling of one of the halls of the Museum Charles X at the Louvre. Ingres was unable to finish the work in time for the 1827 Salon, but displayed the painting in grisaille.[61] The 1827 Salon became a confrontation between the neoclassicism of Ingres's Apotheosis and a new manifesto of romanticism by Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus. Ingres joined the battle with enthusiasm; he called Delacroix "the apostle of ugliness" and told friends that he recognized "the talent, the honorable character and distinguished spirit" of Delacroix, but that "he has tendencies which I believe are dangerous and which I must push back."[62][63]
Despite the considerable patronage he enjoyed under the Bourbon government, Ingres welcomed the July Revolution of 1830.[64] That the outcome of the Revolution was not a republic but a constitutional monarchy was satisfactory to the essentially conservative and pacifistic artist, who in a letter to a friend in August 1830 criticized agitators who "still want to soil and disturb the order and happiness of a freedom so gloriously, so divinely won."[65] Ingres's career was little affected, and he continued to receive official commissions and honors under the July Monarchy.
Ingres exhibited in the Salon of 1833, where his portrait of Louis-François Bertin (1832) was a particular success. The public found its realism spellbinding, although some of the critics declared its naturalism vulgar and its colouring drab.[66] In 1834 he finished a large religious painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian, which depicted the first saint to be martyred in Gaul. The painting was commissioned in 1824 by the Ministry of the Interior for the Cathedral of Autun, and the iconography in the picture was specified by the bishop. Ingres conceived the painting as the summation of all of his work and skill, and worked on it for ten years before displaying it at the 1834 Salon. He was surprised, shocked and angered by the response; the painting was attacked by both the neoclassicists and by the romantics. Ingres was accused of historical inaccuracy, for the colours, and for the feminine appearance of the Saint, who looked like a beautiful statue. In anger, Ingres announced that he would no longer accept public commissions, and that he would no longer participate in the Salon. He later did participate in some semi-public expositions and a retrospective of his work at the 1855 Paris International Exposition, but never again took part in the Salon or submitted his work for public judgement. Instead, at the end of 1834 he returned to Rome to become the Director of the Academy of France.[67]
Director of the French Academy in Rome (1834–1841)
Ingres remained in Rome for six years. He devoted much of his attention to the training of the painting students, as he was later to do at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He re-organized the Academy, increased the size of the library, added many molds of classical statues to the Academy collection, and assisted the students in getting public commissions in both Rome and Paris. He traveled to Orvieto (1835), Siena (1835), and to Ravenna and Urbino to study the paleochristian mosaics, medieval murals and Renaissance art.[68] He devoted considerable attention to music, one of the subjects of the academy; he welcomed Franz Liszt and Fanny Mendelssohn. He formed a long friendship with Liszt.[69] Composer Charles Gounod, who was a pensioner at the time at the Academy, described Ingres's appreciation of modern music, including Weber and Berlioz, and his adoration for Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Gluck. He joined the music students and his friend Niccolò Paganini in playing Beethoven's violin works.[68] Gounod wrote that Ingres "had the tenderness of an infant and the indignation of an apostle." When Stendhal visited the Academy and disparaged Beethoven, Ingres turned to the doorman, indicated Stendhal, and told him, "If this gentleman ever calls again, I am not here."[70]
His rancor against the Paris art establishment for his failure at the 1834 Salon did not abate. In 1836 he refused a major commission from the French Minister of the Interior,
The second painting he sent, in 1840, was The Illness of Antiochus (1840; also known as Aniochus and Stratonice) a history painting on a theme of love and sacrifice, a theme once painted by David in 1800, when Ingres was in his studio. It was commissioned by the Duc d'Orleans, the son of King Louis Philippe I), and had very elaborate architectural background designed by one of the Academy students, Victor Baltard, the future architect of the Paris market Les Halles. The central figure was an ethereal woman in white, whose contemplative pose with her hand on her chin recurs in some of Ingres's female portraits.[72]
His painting of Aniochius and Stratonice, despite its small size, just one meter, was a major success for Ingres. In August it was shown in the private apartment of the duc d'Orléans in the Pavilion Marsan of the Palais des Tuileries.[73] The King greeted him personally at Versailles and gave him a tour of the Palace. He was offered a commission to paint a portrait of the Duke, the heir to the throne, and another from the Duc de Lunyes to create two huge murals for the Château de Dampierre. In April 1841 he returned definitively to Paris.[74]
Last years (1841–1867)
One of the first works executed after his return to Paris was a portrait of the duc d'Orléans. After the heir to the throne was killed in a carriage accident a few months after the painting was completed in 1842, Ingres received commissions to make additional copies. He also received a commission to design seventeen stained glass windows for the chapel on the place where the accident occurred, and a commission for eight additional stained-glass designs for Orléans chapel in Dreux.
The Revolution of 1848, which overthrew Louis Philippe and created the French Second Republic, had little effect on his work or his ideas. He declared that the revolutionaries were "cannibals who called themselves French",[77] but during the Revolution completed his Venus Anadyomene, which he had started as an academic study in 1808. It represented Venus, rising from the sea which had given birth to her, surrounded by cherubs. He welcomed the patronage of the new government of Louis-Napoleon, who in 1852 became Emperor Napoleon III.
In 1843 Ingres began the decorations of the great hall in the Château de Dampierre with two large murals, the Golden Age and the Iron Age, illustrating the origins of art. He made more than five hundred preparatory drawings,[78] and worked on the enormous project for six years. In an attempt to imitate the effect of Renaissance frescos, he chose to paint the murals in oil on plaster, which created technical difficulties.[79] Work on the Iron Age never progressed beyond the architectural background painted by an assistant.[80] Meanwhile, the growing crowd of nudes in the Golden Age discomfited Ingres's patron, the Duc de Luynes, and Ingres suspended work on the mural in 1847. Ingres was devastated by the loss of his wife, who died on 27 July 1849, and he was finally unable to complete the work.[81] In July 1851, he announced a gift of his artwork to his native city of Montauban, and in October he resigned as professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.[82]
However, in 1852, Ingres, then seventy-one years of age, married forty-three-year-old Delphine Ramel, a relative of his friend Marcotte d'Argenteuil. Ingres was rejuvenated, and in the decade that followed he completed several significant works, including the portrait of Princesse
He continued to rework and refine his classic themes. In 1856 Ingres completed
Near the end of his life, he made one of his best-known masterpieces,
Ingres died of
Style
Ingres's style was formed early in life and changed comparatively little.[94] His earliest drawings, such as the Portrait of a Man (or Portrait of an unknown, 3 July 1797, now in the Louvre[95]) already show a suavity of outline and an extraordinary control of the parallel hatchings which model the forms. From the first, his paintings are characterized by a firmness of outline reflecting his often-quoted conviction that "drawing is the probity of art".[96] He believed colour to be no more than an accessory to drawing, explaining: "Drawing is not just reproducing contours, it is not just the line; drawing is also the expression, the inner form, the composition, the modelling. See what is left after that. Drawing is seven eighths of what makes up painting."[97]
The art historian Jean Clay said Ingres "proceeded always from certitude to certitude, with the result that even his freest sketches reveal the same kind of execution as that found in the final works."[98] In depicting the human body he disregarded rules of anatomy—which he termed a "dreadful science that I cannot think of without disgust"—in his quest for a sinuous arabesque.[98] Abhorring the visible brushstroke, Ingres made no recourse to the shifting effects of colour and light on which the Romantic school depended; he preferred local colours only faintly modelled in light by half tones. "Ce que l'on sait," he would repeat, "il faut le savoir l'épée à la main." ("Whatever you know, you must know it with sword in hand.") Ingres thus left himself without the means of producing the necessary unity of effect when dealing with crowded compositions, such as the Apotheosis of Homer and the Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian. Among Ingres's historical and mythological paintings, the most satisfactory are usually those depicting one or two figures, such as Oedipus, The Half-Length Bather, Odalisque, and The Spring, subjects only animated by the consciousness of perfect physical well-being.[86]
In Roger Freeing Angelica, the female nude seems merely juxtaposed with the meticulously rendered but inert figure of Roger flying to the rescue on his hippogriff,[99] for Ingres was rarely successful in the depiction of movement and drama. According to Sanford Schwartz, the "historical, mythological, and religious pictures bespeak huge amounts of energy and industry, but, conveying little palpable sense of inner tension, are costume dramas ... The faces in the history pictures are essentially those of models waiting for the session to be over. When an emotion is to be expressed, it comes across stridently, or woodenly."[100]
Ingres was averse to theories, and his allegiance to classicism—with its emphasis on the ideal, the generalized, and the regular—was tempered by his love of the particular.[101] He believed that "the secret of beauty has to be found through truth. The ancients did not create, they did not make; they recognized."[102] In many of Ingres's works there is a collision between the idealized and the particular that creates what Robert Rosenblum termed an "oil-and-water sensation".[103] This contradiction is vivid in Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry (1842), for example, in which the realistically painted 81-year-old composer is attended by an idealized muse in classical drapery.[104]
Ingres's choice of subjects reflected his literary tastes, which were severely limited: he read and reread
Although capable of painting quickly, he often laboured for years over a painting. Ingres's pupil
Portraits
-
Portrait of Marie-Françoise Rivière (1805–06), oil on canvas, 116.5 x 81.7 cm, Louvre
-
Portrait of Charles Marcotte (1810), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
-
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832), the Louvre
-
Portrait of Comtesse d'Haussonville (1845), Frick Collection, New York
-
Portrait of Baronne de Rothschild (1848), Rothschild Collection, Paris
While Ingres believed that history painting was the highest form of art, his modern reputation rests largely upon the exceptional quality of his portraits. By the time of his retrospective at the Exposition Universelle in 1855, an emerging consensus viewed his portrait paintings as his masterpieces.
For his female portraits, he often posed the subject after a classical statue; the famous portrait of the Comtesse de'Haussonville may have been modeled after a Roman statue called "Pudicity" ("modesty") in the Vatican collection.[114] Another trick that Ingres used was to paint the fabrics and details in the portraits with extreme precision and accuracy, but to idealize the face. The eye of the viewer would perceive the fabrics as realistic and would assume the face was equally true.[115] His portraits of women range from the warmly sensuous Madame de Senonnes (1814) to the realistic Mademoiselle Jeanne Gonin (1821), the Junoesque Marie-Clothilde-Inés de Foucauld, Madame Moitessier (portrayed standing and seated, 1851 and 1856), and the chilly Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, Princesse de Broglie (1853).
Drawings
-
Study for the Grande Odalisque (1814)
-
The violinistNiccolo Paganini(1819)
-
Study for the portrait of the Vicomtesse d'Haussonville (circa 1844)
-
Study for The Turkish Bath (1859)
Drawing was the foundation of Ingres's art. In the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he excelled at figure drawing, winning the top prizes. During his years in Rome and Florence, he made hundreds of drawings of family, friends, and visitors, many of them of very high portrait quality. He never began a painting without first resolving the drawing, usually with a long series of drawing in which he refined the composition. In the case of his large history paintings, each figure in the painting was the subject of numerous sketches and studies as he tried different poses. He demanded that his students at the Academy and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts perfect their drawing before anything else; he declared that a "thing well drawn is always a thing well painted".[116]
His portrait drawings, of which about 450 are extant,[117] are today among his most admired works. While a disproportionate number of them date from his difficult early years in Italy, he continued to produce portrait drawings of his friends until the end of his life. Agnes Mongan has written of the portrait drawings:
Before his departure in the fall of 1806 from Paris for Rome, the familiar characteristics of his drawing style were well established, the delicate yet firm contour, the definite yet discreet distortions of form, the almost uncanny capacity to seize a likeness in the precise yet lively delineation of features.
The preferred materials were also already established: the sharply pointed graphite pencil on a smooth white paper. So familiar to us are both the materials and the manner that we forget how extraordinary they must have seemed at the time ... Ingres' manner of drawing was as new as the century. It was immediately recognized as expert and admirable. If his paintings were sternly criticized as "Gothic," no comparable criticism was leveled at his drawings.[118]
His student Raymond Balze described Ingres's working routine in executing his portrait drawings, each of which required four hours, as "an hour and a half in the morning, then two-and-a-half hours in the afternoon, he very rarely retouched it the next day. He often told me that he got the essence of the portrait while lunching with the model who, off guard, became more natural."[119] The resulting drawings, according to John Canaday, revealed the sitters' personalities by means so subtle—and so free of cruelty—that Ingres could "expose the vanities of a fop, a silly woman, or a windbag, in drawings that delighted them."[120]
Ingres drew his portrait drawings on wove paper, which provided a smooth surface very different from the ribbed surface of laid paper (which is, nevertheless, sometimes referred to today as "Ingres paper").[121] The early drawings are characterized by very taut contours drawn with sharply pointed graphite, while later drawings show freer lines and more emphatic modeling, drawn with a softer, blunter graphite.[122]
Drawings made in preparation for paintings, such as the many studies for The Martyrdom of St. Symphorian and The Golden Age, are more varied in size and treatment than are the portrait drawings. It was his usual practice to make many drawings of nude models, in search of the most eloquent gesture, before making another series of drawings for the draperies. In his early years he sometimes had his model pose behind a translucent veil that suppressed details and emphasized the arabesque.[123] He often used female models when testing poses for male figures, as he did in drawings for Jesus Among the Doctors.[124] Nude studies exist even for some of his commissioned portraits, but these were drawn using hired models.[125]
Ingres drew a number of
Colour
For Ingres, colour played an entirely secondary role in art. He wrote, "Colour adds ornament to a painting; but it is nothing but the handmaiden, because all it does is to render more agreeable the true perfections of the art. Rubens and Van Dyck can be pleasing at first sight, but they are deceptive; they are from the poor school of colourists, the school of deception. Never use bright colours, they are anti-historic. It is better to fall into gray than to into bright colours."
Ingres's own paintings vary considerably in their use of colour, and critics were apt to fault them as too grey or, contrarily, too jarring.
Ingres and Delacroix
Ingres and Delacroix became, in the mid-19th century, the most prominent representatives of the two competing schools of art in France,
The dispute between the two painters and schools reappeared at the 1827 Salon, where Ingres presented L'Apotheose d'Homer, an example of classical balance and harmony, while Delacroix showed The Death of Sardanapalus, another glittering and tumultuous scene of violence. The duel between the two painters, each considered the best of his school, continued over the years. Paris artists and intellectuals were passionately divided by the conflict, although modern art historians tend to regard Ingres and other Neoclassicists as embodying the Romantic spirit of their time.[132]
At the 1855 Universal Exposition, both Delacroix and Ingres were well represented. The supporters of Delacroix and the romantics heaped abuse on the work of Ingres. The
Delacroix himself was merciless toward Ingres. Describing the exhibition of works by Ingres at the 1855 Exposition, he called it "ridiculous ... presented, as one knows, in a rather pompous fashion ... It is the complete expression of an incomplete intelligence; effort and pretension are everywhere; nowhere is there found a spark of the natural."[135]
According to Ingres' student
Pupils
Ingres was a conscientious teacher and was greatly admired by his students.[137] The best known of them is Théodore Chassériau, who studied with him from 1830, as a precocious eleven-year-old, until Ingres closed his studio in 1834 to return to Rome. Ingres considered Chassériau his truest disciple—even predicting, according to an early biographer, that he would be "the Napoleon of painting".[138]
By the time Chassériau visited Ingres in Rome in 1840, however, the younger artist's growing allegiance to the romantic style of
Influence on modern art
Ingres's influence on later generations of artists was considerable. One of his heirs was
Barnett Newman credited Ingres as a progenitor of abstract expressionism, explaining: "That guy was an abstract painter ... He looked at the canvas more often than at the model. Kline, de Kooning—none of us would have existed without him."[143]
Pierre Barousse, the curator of the Musée Ingres, wrote:
...One realizes in how many ways a variety of artists claim him as their master, from the most plainly conventional of the nineteenth century such as Cabanel or Bouguereau, to the most revolutionary of our century from Matisse to Picasso. A classicist? Above all, he was moved by the impulse to penetrate the secret of natural beauty and to reinterpret it through its own means; an attitude fundamentally different to that of David ... there results a truly personal and unique art admired as much by the Cubists for its plastic autonomy, as by the Surrealists for its visionary qualities.[144]
Ingres is one of the most cited artists in the interpictural compositions of the Peruvian painter Herman Braun-Vega.[145][146] The latter dedicated an entire exhibition to him in 2006 on the occasion of the year dedicated to Ingres in France museums.[147]
Violon d'Ingres
Ingres's well-known passion for playing the violin gave rise to a common expression in the French language, "violon d'Ingres", meaning a second skill beyond the one by which a person is mainly known.
Ingres was an amateur violin player from his youth, and played for a time as second violinist for the orchestra of Toulouse. When he was Director of the French Academy in Rome, he played frequently with the music students and guest artists. Charles Gounod, who was a student under Ingres at the Academy, merely noted that "he was not a professional, even less a virtuoso". Along with the student musicians, he performed Beethoven string quartets with Niccolò Paganini. In an 1839 letter, Franz Liszt described his playing as "charming", and planned to play through all the Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas with Ingres. Liszt also dedicated his transcriptions of the 5th and 6th symphonies of Beethoven to Ingres on their original publication in 1840.[148]
The American avant-garde artist Man Ray used this expression as the title of a famous photograph[149] portraying Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) in the pose of the Valpinçon Bather with two f-holes painted on to make her body resemble a violin.
Gallery
-
Academic Study of a Male Torso, 1801,National Museum in Warsaw
-
Self-Portrait, 1804, revised c. 1850, Musée Condé, Chantilly
-
Madame Duvaucey, 1807, Musée Condé, Chantilly
-
Jesus Returning the Keys to St. Peter, 1820
-
Mademoiselle Jeanne-Suzanne-Catherine Gonin, 1821, Taft Museum of Art
-
The Princesse de Broglie, née Joséphine-Eléonore-Marie-Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, 1853, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
-
Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII, 1854, Louvre
-
The Virgin of the Host, 1854
-
Mme. Moitessier, 1856, National Gallery
-
Angelica, 1859, São Paulo Museum of Art
See also
- Napoleon legacy and memory
Notes
- ^ Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
- ^ Parker 1926.
- ^ a b Arikha 1986, p. 103.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 25, 280.
- ^ Prat 2004, p. 15.
- ^ a b c Mongan and Naef 1967, p. xix.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 16.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 31.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 20.
- ^ Delécluze, Étienne-Jean, Louis David, son école et son temps (1863).
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 24.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 25.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 29.
- ^ Jover 2005, pp. 36–51.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 36.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 27.
- ^ a b c Condon et al. 1983, p. 13.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 46.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 48.
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, p. 22.
- ^ Jover 2005, pp. 48–51.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 68.
- ^ Quoted and translated in Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 70.
- ^ a b Jover 2005, p. 54.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 546.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 75.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 56.
- ^ Jover 2005, pp. 58–59.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, p. 38.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 98–101.
- ^ a b c Condon et al. 1983, p. 64.
- ^ Radius 1968, pp. 90–92.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 138.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 68.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 104.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 152–154.
- ^ Mongan and Naef 1967, p. xx.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 77.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 106.
- ISBN 0-9612276-0-5
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, p. 52.
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, p. 50
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 147, 547.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 111.
- ^ Mongan and Naef 1967, p. xvii.
- ^ a b Arikha 1986, p. 104.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, p. 12.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 196.
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, p. 90.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 112.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, p. 86.
- ^ Delaborde 1870, p. 229.
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Landon, Charles, Annals du musée, Salon de 1814, Paris, 1814, cited in Jover (2005), p. 87
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, pp. 23, 114.
- ^ Fleckner 2007, p. 66.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 152.
- ^ a b Jover 2005, p. 162.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, pp. 20, 128.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 164.
- ^ Condon, Grove Art Online.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 165.
- ^ Siegfried & Rifkin 2001, pp. 78–81.
- ^ Grimme 2006, p. 30.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 281–282.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 503.
- ^ Fleckner 2007, pp. 81–83.
- ^ a b c Fleckner 2007, p. 88.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 550.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 188.
- ^ Radius 1968, p. 107.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 408, 489.
- ^ Shelton, Andrew Carrington (2005). Ingres and his Critics. Cambridge University Press, p. 61.
- ^ Fleckner 2007, p. 96.
- ^ Prat 2004, pp. 86–87.
- ^ Werner, Alfred (1966). "Monsieur Ingres – Magnificent 'Reactionary' ". The Antioch Review, 26 (4): 491–500.
- ^ Jover 2005, pp. 228–229.
- OCLC 932376939.
- ^ Grimme 2006, p. 81.
- ^ Prat 2004, p. 88.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 212.
- ^ Mongan and Naef 1967, pp. xxii–xxiii.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 554.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 555.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 253.
- ^ a b public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 566–567. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Radius 1968, pp. 91, 112.
- ^ Grimme 2006, p. 94.
- ^ Fleckner 2007, p. 126.
- ^ Barousse et al. 1979, p. 48.
- ^ a b Prat 2004, p. 90.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 246.
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, p. 25.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 5.
- ^ "Portrait of an unknown, since the bust, left profile, 1797 – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres". www.wikiart.org.
- ^ Prat 2004, p. 13.
- ^ Barousse et al. 1979, p. 5.
- ^ a b Clay 1981, p. 132.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 110.
- ^ Schwartz 2006.
- ^ Arikha 1986, pp. 2–5.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 2.
- ^ Rosenblum 1985, p. 132.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, pp. 12–13.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, pp. 11–12.
- ^ "Highlights". Cornucopia. No. 10.
- ^ Condon et al. 1983, p. 11.
- ^ Radius 1968, p. 115.
- ^ Cohn and Siegfried 1980, p. 75.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 512.
- ^ Charles Baudelaire, Le Salon de 1859
- ^ a b Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 300.
- ^ Russell, John. "Ingres's Portrait of a Lady is the Mirror of an Age", The New York Times, 24 November 1985. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
- ^ Jover 2005, pp. 222–223.
- ^ King, Edward S. (1942). "Ingres as Classicist". The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 20: 68–113.
- ^ Ribeiro 1999, p. 47.
- ^ Mongan and Naef 1967, p. xiii.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 6.
- ^ Canaday 1969, p. 814.
- ^ Mongan and Naef 1967, p. 244.
- ^ Mongan and Naef 1967, p. xxii.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 48.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 91.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, pp. 432, 449.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 1.
- ^ Jover 2005, pp. 189–190.
- ^ Jover 2005, p. 191.
- ^ a b Ribeiro 1999, p. 18.
- ^ Clark 1976, p. 121.
- ^ Fleckner 2007, pp. 84–87.
- ^ Turner 2000, p. 237.
- ^ de Goncourt, Edmond and Jules, L'Exposition Universelle de 1855
- ^ Baudelaire, Charles, "The International Exposition of 1855
- ^ Delacroix, Eugène, Journal, 15 May 1855
- ISBN 0-15-503769-2.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 281.
- ^ Guégan et al. 2002, p. 168.
- ^ Tinterow, Conisbee et al. 1999, p. 370.
- ^ Arikha 1986, p. 11.
- ^ a b c Jover 2005, p. 247.
- ^ Fleckner 2007, p. 78.
- ^ Schneider 1969, p. 39.
- ^ Barousse et al. 1979, p. 7.
- ISBN 978-2-84459-129-6.
[Les] références picturales privilégiées [de Braun-Vega sont] Matisse, Ingres, Cézanne, Picasso, Goya, Rembrandt
- ISBN 978-2-7572-0242-5.
L'œuvre de Braun-Vega regorge d'allusions ingresques depuis qu'il a découvert les dessins du Montalbanais au Louvre en 1972
- ^ "Exposition : Le peintre Braun‑Vega à Beurnier". Le Pays (in French). 7 October 2006.
À l'occasion de l'année Ingres, Bernard Fauchille, le directeur des musées de Montbéliard, a choisi de présenter « Bonjour Monsieur Ingres » au musée d'art et d'histoire Beurnier-Rossel. Cette exposition se compose de dessins et de peintures réalisés entre 1982 et 2006 par Braun‑Vega à partir des tableaux de jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
- ^ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed, 1954, Vol. V, p. 299: "Franz Liszt: Catalogue of Works".
- ^ "Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres's Violin) (Getty Museum)". Getty.edu. 7 May 2009. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
References
- Arikha, Avigdor (1986). J.A.D. Ingres: Fifty Life Drawings from the Musée Ingres at Montauban. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts. ISBN 0-89090-036-1
- Barousse, Pierre, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Michael Kauffmann (1979). Ingres, Drawings from the Musée Ingres at Montauban and Other Collections: Arts Council of Great Britain; [Victoria and Albert Museum shown first]. [London]: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0-7287-0204-5
- Betzer, Sarah E., & Ingres, J.-A.-D. (2012). Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 9780271048758
- Canaday, John (1969). The Lives of the Painters: Volume 3. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc. OCLC 34554848
- Clark, Kenneth (1976). The Romantic Rebellion: Romantic versus Classic Art. London [u.a.]: Murray [u.a.]. ISBN 0719528577
- Clay, Jean (1981). Romanticism. New York: Vendome. ISBN 0-86565-012-8
- Cohn, Marjorie B.; Siegfried, Susan L. (1980). Works by J.-A.-D. Ingres in the Collection of the Fogg Art Museum. Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Univ. OCLC 6762670
- Condon, Patricia. "Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.
- Condon, Patricia; Cohn, Marjorie B.; Mongan, Agnes (1983). In Pursuit of Perfection: The Art of J.-A.-D. Ingres. Louisville: The J. B. Speed Art Museum. ISBN 0-9612276-0-5
- Delaborde, Henri (1870). Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine: D'apres les notes manuscrites et les lettres du maitre. Paris: H. Plon OCLC 23402108
- Fleckner, Uwe (2007). Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (in French). H.F. Ullmann. ISBN 978-3-8331-3733-4.
- OCLC 741434100.
- Gowing, Lawrence (1987). Paintings in the Louvre. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. ISBN 1-55670-007-5
- Grimme, Karin H. (2006). Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1780–1867. Hong Kong: Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-5314-3
- Guégan, Stéphane; Pomaréde, Vincent; Prat, Louis-Antoine (2002). Théodore Chassériau, 1819–1856: The Unknown Romantic. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 1-58839-067-5
- Jover, Manuel (2005). Ingres (in French). Paris: Terrail/Édigroup. ISBN 2-87939-287-X.
- Mongan, Agnes; Naef, Dr. Hans (1967). Ingres Centennial Exhibition 1867–1967: Drawings, Watercolors, and Oil Sketches from American Collections. Greenwich, Conn.: Distributed by New York Graphic Society. OCLC 170576
- Parker, Robert Allerton (March 1926). "Ingres: The Apostle of Draughtsmanship". International Studio 83 (346): 24–32.
- Porterfield, Todd, and Susan Siegfried. Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David (Penn State Press, 2006).
- Prat, Louis-Antoine (2004). Ingres. Milan: 5 Continents. ISBN 88-7439-099-8
- Radius, Emilio (1968). L'opera completa di Ingres. Milan: Rizzoli. OCLC 58818848
- ISBN 0-300-07927-3
- Rosenblum, Robert (1985). Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0500090459
- Schneider, Pierre (June 1969). "Through the Louvre with Barnett Newman". ARTnews. pp. 34–72.
- Schwartz, Sanford (13 July 2006). "Ingres vs. Ingres". The New York Review of Books 53 (12): 4–6.
- Siegfried, S. L., & Rifkin, A. (2001). Fingering Ingres. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-22526-9
- Tinterow, Gary; Conisbee, Philip; Naef, Hans (1999). Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-6536-4
- Turner, J. (2000). From Monet to Cézanne: Late 19th-century French Artists. Grove Art. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-22971-2
- Vigne, Georges (1995). Ingres. Translated by John Goodman. New York: Abbeville Press. ISBN 0789200600
External links
- French painting 1774–1830: the Age of Revolution. New York; Detroit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Detroit Institute of Arts. 1975. (see index)
- Biography, Style and Artworks
- Biography and Selected Works of Dominique Ingres
- Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.org – 200 paintings
- A Closer Look at the portrait of Louis-François Bertin by Ingres (Louvre Museum)