INGRES
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was a pupil of David. Having gained the Prix de Rome in 1801, he did not leave for Italy until 1806, but spent the next eighteen years in Rome and Florence, returning to Paris in 1824. Although Ingres was brought up in the cold tradition of the David school, he had a much clearer perception of the true spirit of Greek art than his master. When he became acquainted with the work of Raphael in Rome, he found it the very acme of perfection, and henceforth frankly strove to emulate that master, seeking to arrive at an eclectic ideal of the human form which in its dogmatic rule of the proportions that constitute absolute beauty, allowed none of the accents and variations which make for life and character. Himself greater than his theories, Ingres achieved that perfection of grace and beauty in his deservedly famous The Spring (No. 422, [Plate XLVIII.]), one of the few “gems” in the Salle Duchâtel, and in the very Raphaelesque Odalisque (No. 422b), which was purchased in 1899 from the Princesse de Sagan for £2400. On the other hand, the imposition of an inflexible, rigid ideal of form did incalculable harm to his numerous and less gifted followers, in whom every spark of individuality was extinguished by the tyranny of the dogma.
Yet Ingres, when he applied himself to portraiture, was as uncompromising a realist as Holbein, of whose sensitive, subtle drawing and plastic modelling, without the introduction of entirely unnecessary shiny high lights, we are forcibly reminded by the Portrait of the Painter’s Friend, M. Bochet (No. 428a). Something of the same perfection of modelling, suggested rather by the sensitive contour than clearly stated by pronounced lights and shadows, is to be noticed in the nude figure of The Odalisque, and in the creamy white drapings of the oval Portrait of Mme. Rivière (No. 427). Perhaps his best portrait at the Louvre is the one of M. Bertin, Founder of the Journal des Débats (No. 428b), a masterpiece of character painting, in which the marvellously drawn fleshy hands, with their tapering fingers, are as expressive as the fine head. This portrait was acquired in 1897 for the sum of £3200.
The less admirable side of Ingres’s talent is illustrated by the circular composition of the Virgin of the Host (No. 416), a crude scheme of “Sassoferrato blue” and red, on entirely conventional lines; and by the Apotheosis of Homer (No. 417), a tame Raphaelesque design in which Homer is seen enthroned in the centre, with allegorical figures of the Iliad and Odyssey seated on the steps of the throne, and a winged goddess placing a laurel wreath on his head. To the left of the central group are the figures of Hesiod, Æschylus, Apelles, Raphael, Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Corneille, and Poussin; to the right, Pindar, Plato, Socrates, Alexander, Camoens, Racine, Molière, and Fénelon. There is a touch of the grotesque in the combination of rather mechanical dry portraiture with trite allegory that constitutes the design of the terribly cracked Portrait of the Composer Cherubini (No. 418). His failings as a colourist are most aggressively obvious in the Christ handing the Keys to St. Peter (No. 415). Ingres died in Paris on the 14th January 1867.
PLATE XLVIII.—JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE INGRES
(1780–1867)
No. 422.—THE SPRING
(La Source)
A nude figure of a fair-haired young maiden stands facing the spectator, the background being formed by a perpendicular rock partly overgrown with clinging plants. She raises her right arm over her head to hold the foot of a tilted vase, the mouth of which is supported by her left hand, and from which issues a streamlet of water that falls into a pool at the base of the rock, in which are reflected the feet of the maiden.
Signed on a stone on the left:—“ingres, 1856.”
Painted in oil on canvas.
5 ft. 5 in. × 2 ft. 7½ in. (1.65 × 0.80.)