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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (August 29, 1780
– January 14, 1867) was a France|French
painter. His name is pronounced
IPA|/ɛ̃gʀ/ in French
language|French (i.e. final -es is not
pronounced).

==Life==
He was born in Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne, France.
His father was a painter, sculptor and violinist,
and taught the young Ingres in all these
disciplines. The boy's talent for music seemed
most promising at first — performance of a
concerto of Giovanni Battista Viotti was applauded
at the theatre of Toulouse. In 1791 he entered the
Royal Academy of Arts in Toulouse where he studied
art under Joseph Roques, sculpture under J. Vigan,
and landscape painting under Briant.

In 1796 Ingres went to Paris to study under
Jacques-Louis David, where he studied for four
years, finally wining the Grand Prix in 1801 for
Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles.
He parted company from David over a difference of
opinion on style. Ingres's style was more flat and
linear, and focused on contour.



In 1802 he exhibited Girl after bathing and in
1804 a Portrait of the Napoleon I of France|First
Consul. These were followed in 1806 by Napoleon on
his Imperial throne and a series of portraits of
the Rivière family. These works produced a
disturbing impression on the public. It was clear
that the artist was some one who must be counted
with; his talent, the purity of his line, and his
power of literal rendering were generally
acknowledged; but he was reproached with a desire
to be singular and extraordinary. "Ingres," wrote
Frau v. Hastfer (Leben and Kunst in Paris, 1806)
"wird nach Italien gehen, and dort wird er
vielleicht vergessen dass er zu etwas Grossem
geboren ist, and wird eben darum ein hohes Ziel
erreichen." In this spirit, also, Chaussard
violently attacked his portrait of the Emperor
(Pausanias Francais, 1806), nor did the portraits
of the Rivière family escape. The points on which
Chaussard justly lays stress are the strange
discordances of colour such as the blue of the
cushion against which Madame Rivière leans, and
the want of the relief and warmth of life, but he
omits to touch on that grasp of his subject as a
whole, shown in the portraits of both husband and
wife, which already evidences the strength and
sincerity of the passionless point of view which
marks all Ingres's best productions.



The very year after his arrival in Rome (1808)
Ingres produced Oedipus and the Sphinx, a work
which proved him in the full possession of his
mature powers, and began the Venus Anadyomene,
completed forty years later, and exhibited in
1855. These works were followed by some of his
best portraits, that of Monsieur Bochet, and that
of Madame la Comtesse de Tournon, mother of the
prefect of the department of the Tiber. In 1811 he
finished Jupiter (mythology)|Jupiter and Thetis,
an immense canvas, Romulus's victory over Acron,
and Virgil reading the Aeneid. These were followed
by the Betrothal of Raphael, a small painting, now
lost, executed for Queen Maria Carolina of
Austria|Maria Carolina of Naples; Don Pedro of
Toledo Kissing the Sword of Henry IV of
France|Henry IV, exhibited at the Paris Salon of
1814, together with the Sistine Chapel and the
Grande odalisque. In 1815 Ingres executed Raphael
and the Fornarina in 1816 Pietro Aretino|Aretino
and the envoy of Charles V of France|Charles V,
and Aretino and Tintoretto; in 1817 the Death of
Leonardo da Vinci|Leonardo and Henry IV playing
with his children, both of which works were
commissions from the Comte de Blacas, then
ambassador of France to the Holy See. Roger and
Angelique and Francesca di Rimini, were completed
in 1819, and followed in 1820 by Christ giving the
keys to Saint Peter|Peter.



In 1815, also, Ingres had made many projects for
treating a subject from the life of the celebrated
Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, a
commission from the family, but a loathing for
"cet horrible homme" grew upon him, and finally he
abandoned the task and entered in his diary,
"J'etais forcé par la necessité de peindre un
pareil tableau; Dieu a voulu qu'il reste en
ebauche." ("I was forced by need to paint such a
painting; God wanted it to remain a sketch.")

During all these years Ingres's reputation in
France did not increase. The interest which his
Sistine Chapel had aroused at the Salon of 1814
soon died away; not only was the public
indifferent, but amongst other artists Ingres
found scant recognition. The strict
classicism|classicists looked upon him as a
renegade, and strangely enough Eugène Delacroix
and other pupils of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, the
leaders of that romantic movement for which
Ingres, throughout his long life, always expressed
the deepest abhorrence, alone seem to have been
sensible of his merits. The weight of poverty,
too, was hard to bear. In 1813 Ingres had married;
his marriage had been arranged for him with a
young woman who came in a business-like way from
Montauban, on the strength of the representations
of her friends in Rome. Madame Ingres acquired a
faith in her husband which enabled her to combat
with courage and patience the difficulties which
beset their common existence, and which were
increased by their removal to Florence. There
Bartolini, an old friend, had hoped that Ingres
might have materially bettered his position. This
expectation were disappointed. The good offices of
Bartolini, and of one or two other persons, could
only alleviate the miseries of this stay in a town
where Ingres was all but deprived of the means of
gaining daily bread by the making of those small
portraits for the execution of which, in Rome, his
pencil had been constantly in request.



Before his departure he had, however, been
commissioned to paint for Monsieur de Pastoret the
Entry of Charles V into Paris, and de Pastoret now
obtained an order for Ingres from the
Administration of Fine Arts; he was directed to
treat the Vow of Louis XIII of France|Louis XIII
for the cathedral of Montauban. This work,
exhibited at the Salon of 1824, met with universal
approbation: even those sworn to observe the
unadulterated precepts of David found only
admiration for the Vow of Louis XIII On his return
Ingres was received at Montauban with enthusiastic
homage, and found himself celebrated throughout
France. In the following year (1825) he was
elected to the Institute, and his fame was further
extended in 1826 by the publication of Sudre's
lithograph of the Grande Odalisque, which, having
been scorned by artists and critics alike in 1819,
now became widely popular.

A second commission from the government called
forth the Apotheosis of Homer. From 1826 to 1834
the studio of Ingres was thronged, as once had
been thronged the studio of David, and he was a
recognized chef d'école. Whilst he taught with
authority and wisdom, he steadily worked; and when
in 1834 he produced his great canvas of the
Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien (cathedral of Autun;
lithographed by Trichot-Garneri), it was with
angry disgust and resentment that he found his
work received with the same doubt and
indifference, if not the same hostility, as had
met his earlier ventures. Ingres resolved to work
no longer for the public, and gladly availed
himself of the opportunity to return to Rome, as
director of the École de France, in the room of
Horace Vernet. There he executed The virgin of the
host, Stratonice, Portrait of Luigi Cherubini, and
the Little Odalisque for Monsieur Marcotte, the
faithful admirer for whom, in 1814, Ingres had
painted the Sistine Chapel.

The Stratonice, executed for Louis-Philippe of
France|Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans, had been
exhibited at the Palais Royal for several days
after its arrival in France, and the beauty of the
composition produced so favourable an impression
that, on his return to Paris in 1841, Ingres found
himself received with all the deference that he
felt to be his due. A portrait of the purchaser of
Stratonice was one of the first works executed
after his return; and Ingres shortly afterwards
began the decorations of the great hall in the
Chateau de Dampierre, which, unfortunately for the
reputation of the painter, were begun with an
ardour which gradually slackened, until in 1849
Ingres, having been further discouraged by the
loss of his faithful and courageous wife,
abandoned all hope of their completion, and the
contract with the duc de Luynes was finally
cancelled.

A minor work, Jupiter and Antiope, marks the year
1851, but Ingres's next considerable undertaking
(1853) was the Apotheosis of Napoleon I, painted
for the ceiling of a hall in the Hotel de Ville,
Paris; Joan of Arc appeared in 1854; and in 1855
Ingres consented to rescind the resolution, more
or less strictly kept since 1834, in favour of the
International Exhibition, where a room was
reserved for his works. Napoléon Joseph Charles
Paul Bonaparte, president of the jury, proposed an
exceptional recompense for their author, and
obtained from emperor Napoleon III of France
Ingres's nomination as grand officer of the Legion
of Honour. With renewed confidence Ingres now took
up and completed one of his most charming
productions, The spring, a figure of which he had
painted the torso in 1823, and which seen with
other works in London in 1862 there renewed the
general sentiment of admiration, and procured him,
from the imperial government, the dignity of
senator.



After the completion of The spring, the principal
works produced by Ingres were with one or two
exceptions (Molière and Louis XIV of France|Louis
XIV, 1858; The Turkish bath 1859), were of a
religious character. The virgin of the adoption,
1858 (painted for Mademoiselle Roland-Gosselin),
was followed by The virgin crowned (painted for
Madame la Baronne de Larinthie) and The virgin
with child. In 1859 these were followed by
repetitions of The virgin of the host; and in 1862
Ingres completed Christ and the doctors, a work
commissioned many years before by Queen Marie
Amalie of Bourbon-Sicilies|Marie Amalie for the
chapel of Bizy.

On 17 January 1867 Ingres died in his
eighty-eighth year, having preserved his faculties
to the last. He was interred in the Père
Lachaise|Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.

==Work==


It is to be noted that the Saint Symphorien
exhibited in 1834 closes the list of the works on
which his reputation will chiefly rest; for The
spring, which at first sight seems to be an
exception, was painted, all but the head and the
extremities, in 1821; and from those who knew the
work well in its incomplete state we learn that
the after-painting, necessary to fuse new and old,
lacked the vigour, the precision, and the
something like touch which distinguished the
original execution of the torso.



Touch was not, indeed, at any time a means of
expression on which Ingres seriously calculated;
his constant employment of local tint, in mass but
faintly modelled in light by half tones, forbade
recourse to the shifting effects of colour and
light on which the Romantic school depended in
indicating those fleeting aspects of things which
they rejoiced to put on canvas; their methods
would have disturbed the calculations of an art
wholly based on form and line. Except in his
Sistine Chapel, and one or two slighter pieces,
Ingres kept himself free from any preoccupation as
to depth and force of colour and tone; driven,
probably by the excesses of the Romantic movement
into an attitude of stricter protest. "Ce que l'on
sait," he would repeat, "il faut le savoir
l'épée à la main." ("This is what I know: one
must know the sword in the hand.") Ingres left
himself therefore, in dealing with crowded
compositions, such as the Apotheosis of Homer and
the Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien, without the
means of producing the necessary unity of effect
which had been employed in due measure, as the
Stanze of the Vatican bear witness, by the very
master (Raphael) whom he most deeply reverenced.
Thus it came to pass that in subjects of one or
two figures Ingres showed to the greatest
advantage: in Oedipus, in the Girl after bathing,
the Odalisque and The spring, subjects only
animated by the consciousness of perfect physical
well-being, we find Ingres at his best. One
hesitates to put Roger and Angelique upon this
list, for though the female figure shows the
finest qualities of Ingres's work, deep study of
nature in her purest forms, perfect sincerity of
intention and power of mastering an ideal
conception; yet side by side with these the effigy
of Roger on his hippogriff bears witness that from
the passionless point of view, which was Ingres's
birthright, the weird creatures of the fancy
cannot be seen.

==Violon d'Ingres==
The French expression "violon d'Ingres", meaning a
hobby, stems from the artist's pastime of playing
the violin to relax from his painting efforts.

==References==
commons| Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
* 1911
* Delaborde, Ingres, sa vie et ses travaux, 1870.