Ingres

by A. J. Finberg

This “portrait picture” was begun in Rome in 1839, but was only finished in Paris in 1842. The painter’s first intention was to represent only the figure of Chérubini, but afterwards he had the canvas enlarged to make room behind the musician for the figure of the “Muse of lyrical poetry, mother of the sacred hymns.” It is doubtful whether this addition is an improvement.

“The Apotheosis of Homer,” the subject chosen for the Louvre ceiling, was begun and finished within the short space of a single year. The amount of work involved in making the preparatory studies and carrying through a work of such importance was enormous, and Ingres had never before displayed so much energy and decision. The conception of the picture was a noble one. It was to represent the spiritual ties which bind one generation of human beings to the other; to insist on the debt which each worker in the field of art and thought owes to his predecessors; to celebrate the real immortality of genius by showing the incessant action which it exerts on all the individuals who are successively born and developed by its influence. We must confess that Ingres has found a worthy plastic formula to express his highly abstract conception. He shows us the poets, painters, sculptors, philosophers, and great patrons of the arts grouped round the seat of the old blind poet. Each individual face, each gesture and pose, has been studied and thought out patiently, and executed with masterly skill. The terrible problem of grouping together so many different personalities and so many costumes of widely differing periods has been faced and overcome. The whole produces an effect of incomparable simplicity and grandeur.

In no part of the pictures are Ingres’ marvellous powers of realisation more clearly displayed than in the three purely symbolical figures of the Winged Victory who places the crown of gold upon the forehead of the poet, and those representing the Odyssey and the Iliad who sit at his feet. What a distance separates these figures, full of feminine charm and of exuberant life, from the cold allegories of the other painters of his time! Look at the queenly grace of the Victory; the disdainful lips, the contracted nostrils of the proud woman, with hands nervously crossed upon her knee, who sits on the poet’s right; and the dreamer who sits on his left, with her mantle wrapped round her, her hand upon her chin, her half-closed eyes dreaming of the far-away adventures of Ulysses.

This picture remained in the place for which it was destined for about twenty years. Then it was replaced by an excellent copy made by three of the master’s pupils, Dumas and the brothers Baize, and the original was hung in the Louvre, where it could be better seen and admired by the public and more carefully studied by the painters.

Such a display of his powers disarmed even the many enemies which Ingres had made. But the artist was never satisfied. He thought he had not attained the supreme and definitive expression of his genius. He thought he could do better, that he could express himself with more force, more persuasive energy and warmth, in his next work. This was a religious scene commissioned for the Cathedral of Autun—the “Martyrdom of St. Symphorian.”

Before this work was finished he painted yet another of those superb portraits which he himself professed to regard as a waste of time, but which posterity values more highly than the allegorical and religious subjects to which he devoted himself with such fierce energy and consuming ardour. This was the portrait of “Bertin ainé,” which was exhibited at the Salon of 1833, and is now in the Louvre. The old man, with turbulent grey hair, with keen penetrating eyes, with wary mouth, seated so squarely in his chair with his hands on his knees—the whole bodily and spiritual presence of the man is placed so vividly upon the canvas that we seem to know him more intimately than we know our friends.

After being repainted several times, the “Martyrdom of St Symphorian” was exhibited at the Salon the year after the portrait of M. Bertin had appeared there. Instead of bringing Ingres a more complete victory than his “Homer,” it brought him an unexpected check. To us, living as we do in a perfect anarchy of taste, it is rather difficult to understand why this picture should have scandalised and alarmed the artists and public of the time. The artist was accused of exaggeration, of an abuse of power. Since Michael Angelo they had never seen in painting such muscles as those of the arms and legs of the lictors who are taking the saint to his place of torture. The whole effect, Ingres’ critics said, was forced and improbable. They did not understand that the artist had deliberately intended to force the contrast between the bestiality of the murderers and the moral superiority of their victim.

In spite of its want of atmosphere and other shortcomings, the picture is a moving and impressive one. There is nothing vulgar in those too robust figures. The face of the young martyr, illuminated with faith, and the fanatical exaltation of the mother, form the two moral centres of the drama. Between them the curiosity and emotion of the crowd are divided. Some gaze in stupor at this woman who sends her son to torture. They do not understand that she sees him already in glory, crowned with celestial beatitudes. Others are indignant with her, like the young man who picks up a stone to throw at her, or like the soldier behind the centurion who turns towards her a face full of astonishment and irritation. A young woman presses her child in her arms in shuddering protestation. Others look at the man who is about to die for his faith. Their sentiments oscillate between hostility, compassion, indifference, and horror. The women are grieved. An old man takes his head in his hands, confounded by such inconceivable folly. And, dominating them all, the centurion on horseback gives the order to march to the place of execution.

The learned construction of such a crowded scene, the nobility and expressiveness of the figures, the fine treatment of drapery, the virile energy of the drawing, the sober and restrained colouring, and, above all, that indefinable beauty which genius stamps on all its creations, might well have silenced the adverse criticisms with which the artists and the public assailed this picture.

Ingres suffered from these criticisms to a quite unreasonable extent. “I do not belong to this apostate century,” he exclaimed. He could not understand people’s objections, nothing could console him, and he cursed his epoch and the injustice of the public. He swore he would never exhibit at the Salon again. He wished to flee from Paris. He accepted as a deliverance the appointment of Director of the Academy of France in Rome, shut his studio, dismissed his pupils, and with an indignant and bitter spirit he quitted Paris again for the Eternal City.