Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Master of the French Academy, Overcoming the Establishment

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres was born in Montauban, France in 1780 to a musical and artistic father, and by 1792, at the age of twelve, the family resettles in Toulouse where his father recognizes the talent of his young son, and enrolls him into a series of art classes to find where his gifts are best suited. It should be noted that the young Ingres was as gifted with the violin, so much so that for a time he thought that it might be an option, but it was soon discounted when he sees the reproductions of Raphael's paintings and can't let lose the power of his work, and leaving the studio of his landscape teacher Monsieur Briant, he starts off to Paris and is enrolled into Jacques-Louis David's atelier. It was a match made in the heavens, David soon takes the artist under his wing, and with very strict adherence to David's rigid training, Ingres begins to shine. For four productive years, Ingres continued to show great promise, and his devotion to his mentor was never forgotten, and by 1800 he obtained the coveted second place in the yearly Ecole des Beaux-Arts competition, but finally carried off the all-important Grand Prix in 1801 at the youthful age of just twenty-one. In the self-portraits there is the youthful confidence of an artist ready to fulfil the promise of his talents, but the road to becoming a portrait painter becomes a rough one, as his talents are tested by the critic Chaussart as having a lack of emotional liveliness about the personages he painted, but for a young painter just striking out to solicit employment, it is difficult enough to get the ball rolling than to straight away have to contend with opinions that may defer more work, but the preoccupation for Ingres is more and more evident that his focus is not only on the sitter but on using his innate ability to design, and he does it above all others, the linear facility for Ingres is to find joy in the minutiae of design elements that surround his subject. His drawing skills are almost an effort to delve ever more deeply into the arabesque, which is not only becoming his trademark but a necessity for his natural well-being as a painter. It is also well to point out that Ingres is ever the humble student of Raphael, and history painting is his obsession to demonstrate his skills not with values but with pure pictorial design. Ingres would prove to be in many ways ahead of his time. It will take some years, unfortunately, for the general public to wake up to his genius, as we shall see. One senses the youthful impatience for glory and achievement, ardent faith, indomitable courage, the self-discipline of a dutiful soldier is unconsciously depicted in his self-portraits and submissions to the Paris Salon of 1806, of which several are very ambitious and important works while he is yet in Rome, including his Napoleon I on his imperial throne, and several portraits possibly including the portrait of his father, pictured here. His paintings are not at all well-received by critics, to his utter dismay, and he states openly, 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. He vows never again to exhibit at the Salon, since it causes so much suffering. Due to his disappointment he breaks his engagement to Julie Forestier, blaming his self-doubt and his unwillingness to return to Paris. The negative criticism is too much to deal with. However, he is yet productive in Rome and tries again in 1808, two years later, with submissions of the Bather and his Sphinx painting. Confident in himself, he remains productive and continues with portrait work and other titles such as The Sleeper, which is bought by Napoleon's general and brother-in-law Joachim Murat. Although he has the bitter taste of rejection by Paris, Ingres continues to receive commissions for portraits, plans, imaginative and history paintings. He is granted studio space and a stipend to help while in Rome. In 1812, at thirty-two years old, he is content to marry Laura Loretta Zuega, the eldest daughter of a Danish archaeologist then in Rome, but his parents discourage the idea because of his bleak financial state at the time, and he breaks it off. Although facing uncertain prospects, in 1813 Ingres marries a young woman, Madeleine Chapelle, who was recommended to him by her friends in Rome. After a courtship carried out through correspondence, he proposed without having met her, and she accepted and by all accounts their marriage was a happy one. Madeleine's faith was unwavering in support of her husband. So, in 1814, with his connections to the royal family he travels to Naples, and is commissioned for more portraits, at the same time continues his history themes that he longs to keep up, which is his obsession. His famous Sistine Chapel painting is also of this date, and he again sends them to the Salon in Paris. The Murat commissions are never paid for, due to the political disruptions and upheaval, and they flee the country. Ingres is faced with several pictures that are confiscated and held, with years of debts he still pays for due to unpaid works, and penniless is left to fend for himself to do whatever he could, resulting in his now famous portrait drawings that have become some of the finest artworks ever done. At this juncture it is important to note that Napoleon is deposed and exiled, but after nine months of exile from Elba he returns to France to resume power, known as the Hundred Days, but is again forced to abdicate, and is exiled to St. Helena in the South Atlantic, and Louis resumes power. All the while Ingres' works are frozen, placed in storage till things settle down. This disruption, however, provides an unexpected but pleasant result for art, his portrait drawings are produced by the hundreds, and it is at this point we wish to focus our attention to highlight some of the brilliant portraits on paper that have been established as a record of perhaps his highest achievement, although it would not be until after 1822 that Ingres would begin to receive his due recognition, and the maximum regard by his fellow artists as one of the most important figures in 19th century painting, with less pushback from Paris. Nevertheless, a re-examination of his work begins to take shape. The Salon is realizing his great contributions, and while he is frequently frustrated because of his desire to paint history paintings stating, he would prefer to work exclusively at history paintings and not waste his time on less important works. His portrait commissions continue, as well as official appointments by the Salon. His good fortunes change, as he is given praise for his work submitted at the Salon of 1825, and awarded the rank of Chevalier in the Legion of Honour, and just two days later at a ceremony, King Charles personally presents him the Cross of the Legion of Honour, which Ingres later describes as the happiest day of his life. As we turn to the exquisite drawings by Ingres, over a long period he covers a whole range of formats from the single figure, half and full length, family pairs and groups, and portrait heads. Then there are the remarkable drawing studies for pictures. It is fascinating to keep in mind that many of them measure little more than 13 by 8 inches, with accessories that may occur much smaller at times, but the breadth of treatment can be appreciated by every artist that has given similar exercises a try. Through his habit of always drawing with his eye, even when there was no pencil in his hand, the surgical sharpness of his vision was kept always at the highest. He could draw lines with the unerring accuracy and swiftness of an archer's shooting arrow. He never missed. "'They say that I paint swiftly,' confessed Horace Vernet, but if only they had watched Ingres when he drew! Compared to him, I am nothing but a tortoise." The rapidity of Ingres' hand in capturing the essential lines of a moving figure is said to have been nothing less than prodigious. He could have drawn a man falling from a roof with faithful accuracy, wrote Amoury Duval, one of his pupils. His love of drawing was a passion that became almost an obsession. Drawing, asserted Ingres, was three-quarters and a half of painting. By drawing he meant the expression, the inner form, the structure, the modelling—everything, in fact, except the colouring of the picture. Into his drawings he poured his very life and soul. This is the reason that the collection of drawings and sketches, hidden away in many quarters or museums, are so treasured. Despite his limitations, despite his quick-tempered irascibility, despite a tendency to become a trifle ridiculous and even bourgeois in his accent, he had hit upon a profound truth. Ingres knew that there must be a passionate adoration of the truth in an artist's mind if that truth is to live through its expression in drawing or painting or poetry. Art, he realised intuitively, must be a thing of love. In 1826, Ingres opens up a two-room atelier at the Rue de Marais-Saint-Germain, which has since been renamed to Rue Visconti. By 1828, just two years later, he began to accept students with fourteen accepted to start, but the number soon escalated, so much so that he provides room in his own atelier for the overflow of students. His dedication is such that Ingres often regards his pupils as family, and in the portrait drawings he produces there are a number of his students privileged to have their likenesses forever immortalised. By December of 1829, at the age of forty-nine, Ingres is named professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, to which he exclaims, The hour of my independence has just sounded, and I am free. I receive sixteen hundred francs from the institute which lodges me. My students bring me three hundred francs each month. I can thus live quite well and set aside all that I earn with my paintbrush. Ingres was made president of the École in 1833. However, during this period there was upheaval in the streets with street-fighting known as the July Revolution, where Ingres and his compatriot artists including Delacroix, Paul Delaroche, Deveriat, and Jean-Baptiste Girard stood guard at the Louvre to protect the collections remaining there overnight. The government again is overthrown with the removal of Charles the Tenth, replaced by Louis-Philippe who was crowned king, also known as the July Monarchy, and remained for the next eighteen years. Among Ingres' pupils there is Hippolyte Flandron, who won the coveted Prix de Rome of 1832, and his picture was shown in Ingres' studio before it debuts at the Salon. The canvas of Monsieur Bertin, which hangs in the Louvre, is accepted by authorities as an example of Ingres' supremacy in the field of portraiture. Painted at the age of fifty-two, it is noticeably marked by mature restraint, unsurpassed design, and overall nobility. It is one of those paintings that rivets the attention immediately. It radiates a personality that is superbly convincing and befitting of the subject. Unflinchingly he evaded the winds of doctrine and dogma, toughly resisted the flurries and dissensions of the revolutionary and Napoleonic epoch. His mind was impervious to the new and irresponsible doctrines of Romanticism which had been heralded in by Rousseau. He arrived at complete maturity at an early age, and he was well past eighty when he signed his final masterpiece, that famous Beintürk, or Turkish bathers, in the Louvre. There was no diminution in Ingres' creative productiveness. His works possess a timeless quality. There seem to be no sharply defined periods. The portrait painting of Louis Mathieu, Count Mollet, Prime Minister of Louis-Philippe, the portrait is shown at Ingres' studio privately. A commentary from a journalist writes, you enter the small salon that serves as Monsieur Ingres' studio, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the presence of, eyes that see, referring to the portrait, a mouth that is about to speak, a head that thinks. It is a new masterpiece by Monsieur Ingres, or to be more accurate, it is the distinguished descendant of the great judge, the glory of French magistrature, Count Mollet. The portrait is presented to the Palais de Tuileries for the royal family to view, at which time Ingres departs for his school in Rome. Ingres helps to expand the Villa Medici. He adds rooms for the life classes, obtains many more antique casts, and of course produces even more pencil drawings numbering at least twenty-three, many of which become gifts to friends. 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 Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. As mentioned earlier, Ingres reorganized the Academy, and assisted his students in getting public commissions, including Henry Lehman, pictured here in this brilliant drawing, who was among those beneficiaries that gained a leg up at the difficult world of public notice for artists. He remained a devoted fan of opera, and considerable attention to musical fets as one of the focuses at the Academy. He formed a long friendship with Franz Liszt and the composer Charles Gounod, who was a pensioner at his time at the Academy. He joined the music students and his friend Niccolo Paganini, who was also portrayed in pencil on paper and performed Beethoven's violin works. Gounod wrote that Ingres had the tenderness of an infant and the indignation of an apostle. His resentment against the Paris art establishment for his failure at the 1834 Salon did not subside. In 1836 he refused a major commission from the French Minister of the Interior because the commission had been offered to another previously. Ingres was deeply romantic. He never let go of his long-time attachments and sentiment to the earlier artists of the Renaissance, and tried very hard to maintain their lofty performances. But he was in fact, as can be seen in his drawings, a very disciplined artist of facts and realism as it suited him. His ability to record faces and gestures are spot on, with no hesitation to get to the point without error. A lesson to all that would follow him as the century drew on, as with that of artists John Singer Sargent, Edgar Degas, and even the naturalist movement painters such as Bastien Lepage. All were enraptured with Ingres' workmanship and qualities of pure design. Finally, we have the two portraits seen here of Jacques-Louis Leblanc and his wife, painted by Ingres in 1823, and were later bought by Edgar Degas when the paintings were offered for sale. The portraits are a brilliant example of Ingres' portraiture, though he lamented doing portraits he was nevertheless one of the best. His workmanship never wavered, and he is appreciated by the artistic community for the high standard he stood for. And finally, we hope you enjoyed viewing the works by Ingres, and we want to thank you, our valued subscribers. Remember to add a like so we can continue, and till next time, bye for now.