The Source (Ingres)

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The Source
La Source
ArtistJean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Alexandre Desgoffe, Paul Balze Edit this on Wikidata
Year1856
Mediumcanvas, oil paint
Dimensions163 cm (64 in) × 80 cm (31 in)
LocationMusée d'Orsay, Paris, France Edit this at Wikidata
CollectionDepartment of Paintings of the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay Edit this on Wikidata
Accession No.RF 219 Edit this on Wikidata
IdentifiersJoconde work ID: 000PE001514
Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur ID: 20364924
[edit on Wikidata]

The Source (

Aphrodite of Cnidus or Venus Pudica.[5] Two of Ingres' students, painters Paul Balze and Alexandre Desgoffe, helped to create the background and water jar.[1]

Description

The painting depicts a

ivy, plant of Dionysus the god of disorder, regeneration, and ecstasy.[7] The water she pours out separates her from the viewer, as rivers mark boundaries of which the crossing is symbolically important.[7]

Marble sculpture based on The Source, commissioned by Dorabji Tata and now in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai

Theme

Art historians Frances Fowle and Richard Thomson suggest that there is a "symbolic unity of woman and nature" in The Source, where the flowering plants and water serve as a background which Ingres fills with woman's "secondary attributes".[8]

Reception

The first exhibition of The Source was in 1856, the year it was completed.

Musée du Louvre. In 1986 it was transferred to the Musée d'Orsay.[1] The painting has been frequently exhibited and widely published.[1][10]

Haldane Macfall in A History of Painting: The French Genius describes The Source as Ingres' "superb nude by which he is chiefly known".[11] Kenneth Clark in his book Feminine Beauty observed how The Source has been described as "the most beautiful figure in French painting."[12] Walter Friedländer in David to Delacroix referred to The Source simply as the most famous of Ingres' paintings.[13]

The model for the painting was the young daughter of Ingres' concierge.[11] In his Confessions of a Young Man, Irish novelist George Moore wrote, with relation to the morality of artistic production, "What care I that the virtue of some sixteen-year-old maid was the price for Ingres' La Source? That the model died of drink and disease in the hospital is nothing when compared with the essential that I should have La Source, that exquisite dream of innocence."[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "La Source". Musée d'Orsay. Retrieved 2 March 2012.
  2. ISBN 978-0-618-25210-7
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-520-24383-5
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-88-7009-780-1
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  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8071-2624-0
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  6. ISBN 978-0-674-45955-7
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  7. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-87042-9
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  8. ISBN 978-0-7546-3685-4
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  9. ISBN 978-0-521-39561-8
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  10. ISBN 978-0-226-26217-8
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  11. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4179-4511-5
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  12. ISBN 978-1-892210-01-2
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  13. ISBN 978-0-674-19401-4
    .
  14. JSTOR 430264
    .
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