Who was Ingres?

Answer 1

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (pronounced /ɛ̃gʀ/ ("Ang", rhymes with "bang", with a hint of the "r", but the final "es" is not pronounced) (August 29, 1780 - January 14, 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter.

Life

Biography-
Ingres was born in Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne, France. His father was a sculptor and violinist, and instructed the young Ingres in all these disciplines. He showed an early talent for music — a performance of a concerto of Giovanni Battista Viotti was applauded at the theatre of Toulouse. In 1791, Ingres 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 with Jacques-Louis David, under whose tutelage he remained for four years, finally winning the Grand Prix in 1801 for Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles. He parted company with David over a difference of opinion on style; Ingres's preference was for shapes flat and linear, with a focus on contour.
La grande odalisque, 1814, Louvre. The texture of the fabric and the smooth skin of the girl are painted in intricate detail. The elongated features of the subject, who has apparently too many vertebrae, are reminiscent of old Mannerist painters. Ingres was searching for the pure form of his models.

La grande odalisque, 1814, Louvre. The texture of the fabric and the smooth skin of the girl are painted in intricate detail. The elongated features of the subject, who has apparently too many vertebrae, are reminiscent of old Mannerist painters. Ingres was searching for the pure form of his models.

In 1802 he exhibited Girl after bathing and in 1804 a Portrait of the 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 someone to be reckoned with; his talent, the purity of his line, and his power of literal rendering were generally acknowledged; but he was reproached for a desire to be singular and extraordinary. "Ingres," wrote Frau V. Hastfer (Leben und Kunst in Paris, 1806) "wird nach Italien gehen, und dort wird er vielleicht vergessen, dass er zu etwas Grossem geboren ist, and wird eben darum ein hohes Ziel erreichen." (Life and Art in Paris: "Ingres will go to Italy, and there he perhaps has forgotten that he is born to something great, and will achieve therefore an ambitious goal." In this spirit, also, Chaussard violently attacked his portrait of the Emperor (Pausanias Francais, 1806), nor did the portraits of the Rivière family escape criticism. The points on which Chaussard justly laid stress were the strange discordances of colour, the want of sculptural relief, and a lack of warmth of life. What was overlooked was Ingres' grasp of his subject as a whole, displayed in the portraits of both husband and wife, which already evidenced the refined draftsmanship and clarity which would distinguish all of Ingres's best productions.
Madame Rivière, 1806, Louvre. The painting's flat plane, though contaning infinite linear invention, rejects traditional perspective devices, and is an early precursor to Cezanne and Picasso.

Madame Rivière, 1806, Louvre. The painting's flat plane, though contaning infinite linear invention, rejects traditional perspective devices, and is an early precursor to Cezanne and Picasso.

The year after his arrival in Rome in (1808), Ingres finished Oedipus and the Sphinx, and began work on Venus Anadyomene, which was to be completed forty years later, finally exhibited in 1855. These works were followed by portraits, such as that of Monsieur Bochet, and Madame la Comtesse de Tournon, mother of the prefect of the department of the Tiber. In 1811 Ingres finished Jupiter and Thetis, an immense canvas, Romulus's victory over Acron, and Virgil reading the Aeneid, followed by the Betrothal of Raphael, a small painting, since lost, and executed for Queen Maria Carolina of Naples; Don Pedro of Toledo Kissing the Sword of Henry IV, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1814, together with the Sistine Chapel and La grande odalisque. In 1815 Ingres executed Raphael and the Fornarina in 1816 Aretino and the envoy of Charles V, and Aretino and Tintoretto; in 1817 the Death of Leonardo and Henry IV playing with his children, both of which works were commissioned by 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 Peter.

In 1815 Ingres 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.")

However, Ingres's reputation in France during this period did not increase. The acclaim given to his Sistine Chapel at the 1814 Salon soon died away; not only was the public indifferent, but amongst other artists Ingres found scant recognition. The strict 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 apprehended of his merits. The weight of poverty, too, was hard to bear. In 1813 Ingres had married; the union was arranged with the young woman on the strength of 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 would materially improve his position. This expectation was 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 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 La 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, and he was a recognized chef d'école. While he taught with authority and wisdom, he worked steadily; 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, 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 was 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 first 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.
The Turkish bath, 1862, Louvre, continues a theme of female voluptuousness attractive to Ingres throughout his life.

The Turkish bath, 1862, Louvre, continues a theme of female voluptuousness attractive to Ingres throughout his life.

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 for which he had painted the torso in 1823, and when 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 a few exceptions (Molière and Louis XIV, 1858; The Turkish Bath 1859), 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 for the chapel of Bizy.

Ingres died on 17 January 1867, at the age of eighty-eighth, having preserved his faculties to the last. He is interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.

Work-
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, but for 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 and precision of touch that 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 with 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 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 Symphorien, which had been employed by Raphael, the master he most revered. Raphael's Stanze of the Vatican demonstrate this use of color.

Subjects of one or two figures are therefore Ingres's most masterly works; in Oedipus, Girl after Bathing, 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 Neoclassical point of view, which was Ingres's birthright, the weird creatures of the fancy cannot be seen.

Summation-
Ingres aspired to Neoclassical perfection, but the pictorial traits which puzzled his contemporaries are now appreciated as evidence of a repressed sensuality, finding expression in Gothic arabesques of line and limpid skin tones, beneath immaculately painted surfaces.

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.

The American photographer Man Ray later used this expression as the title of one of his best-known photographs, of French singer Kiki de Montparnasse.

Trivia-
Two of Ingres's paintings are featured in the computer game Myst. In one, Napoleon's face has been replaced with that of Sirrus..

Answer 2

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was a french artist.

Answer 3

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (b.1780 - d.1867)

French artist who painted in the style known as Neoclassicism. Ingres painted many historical, mythological, and religious subjects. However, he is probably most admired for his portraits and female nudes. Ingres's style emphasizes orderly compositions, smoothly painted surfaces, and precise drawing. Ingres ranks among the finest draftsmen in the history of painting.

Answer 4

French Fine Art Painter.
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Answer 5

A French artist.

Answer 6

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