French painter. A leading Neo-Classicist, he was a student of Jacques
Louis David. He studied and worked in Rome about 1807�20, where he
began the Odalisque series of sensuous female nudes, then went to
Florence, and returned to France 1824. His portraits painted in the
1840s�50s are meticulously detailed and highly polished.
A master draughtsman, he considered drawing 'the probity of art', and
developed his style � based on the study of Raphael and marked by
clarity of line and a cool formality � in fierce opposition to the
Romanticism of Eug�ne Delacroix. His major works, which exercised a
profound influence on 19th-century French Academic art, include Roger
and Angelica 1819 (Louvre, Paris), La Grande Baigneuse 1808
(Louvre, Paris), and La Grande Odalisque 1814 (Louvre, Paris),
and the portraits Madame Moitessier 1856 (National Gallery,
London) and Fran�ois Marius 1807 (Mus�e Granet,
Aix-en-Provence).
Ingres was the son of a tailor who was also an amateur painter,
sculptor and musician. He became a pupil of David, won the Prix de Rome
1801, and studied in Rome and in Florence until 1824. His long absence
from Paris, repeated 1834�41 (when he was again in Rome), partly
explains his lack of sympathy with French contemporaries, notably
Delacroix, who had breathed the atmosphere of Romanticism. Ingres's view
of what was classic in art was founded on Raphael rather than David, as
seen in the Vow of Louis XIII (Montauban Cathedral), acclaimed at
the Salon of 1824, and the Apotheosis of Homer 1827, commissioned
by Charles X for a ceiling in the Louvre.
In subject Ingres was as various as any of his contemporaries, his
works including a Romantic, moonlit Dream of Ossian 1813 (Mus�e
Ingres, Montauban), both antique and medieval themes, paintings of
ceremonial functions, religious paintings, portraits, and nude
compositions oriental at least in the suggestion of the title, such as La
Grande Odalisque and Le Bain Turc 1863 (Louvre, Paris). His
quarrel with the Romantics and the nature of his own Classicism could be
simply stated as a preference for drawing rather than colour. His pencil
portraits, many executed during his first Italian stay, display his
drawing skill. In the painted portrait, such as that of M de Norvins
(National Gallery, London) or Mme de Sennones (Mus�e de Nantes), he
produced some masterpieces, while the nude paintings of his later years
have a sensuous beauty.
The Mus�e Ingres in Montauban, founded 1843, received the contents
of his studio by bequest, including 4,000 of his drawings and numerous
paintings.
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Publishing 1999
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