Ingres

by A. J. Finberg

PLATE VII.—LE DUC D’ORLÉANS
(Musée de Versailles)

This grave and dignified portrait of the Duke of Orleans was ordered by the King in 1842. It is remarkable for the minuteness and care with which all the details of the uniform and the accessories are rendered.

But if Ingres doubted of human justice, he never doubted about his art. He devoted himself to it with renewed passion and enthusiasm. “The day I quitted Paris,” he wrote to one of his friends, “I broke for ever with everything that has to do with the public. Henceforth I will paint entirely for myself. I belong at last to myself, and I will belong only to myself.”

But, as a fact, neither Ingres’ influence nor prestige suffered from the want of success of his “St. Symphorian.” As director of the French Academy at Rome he remained the guide, counsellor, and example of all the young talents of his time. His proud ideal could not fail to attract the enthusiasm of his younger contemporaries. His teaching and example were helpful to others besides the painters. What was essential in his doctrines was applicable to all the arts: to music, which moved him so profoundly; and to sculpture—for did he not use his pencil and brush like a chisel?

Official favour also followed him in his angry retreat. The Duke of Orleans ordered a small historical picture from him, which gave him an immense deal of trouble but was at the same time a source of glorious compensation. He produced “Stratonice,” one of the most successful of his works.

The tragedy of which Stratonice was the heroine had haunted his imagination for years. He had meditated long on the subject, but had always conceived the picture on a large scale. Unfortunately, the picture had to be the same size as Paul Delaroche’s “Death of the Duke of Guise,” to which it was to serve as pendant, and Ingres was constrained to transform his grandiose conception into a miniature. Ingres took six years to paint what he called his “grand historical miniature.” And it is to be somewhat regretted that in his anxiety for archæological exactitude he invited the collaboration of the architect Hittorf. Hittorf was full of his rather excessive theories about the polychromatic architecture of the ancients. He imposed his ideas so completely on the unfortunate artist that he was permitted to paint the background of the picture. Hence the debauch of local colour, of coloured mosaics and bronzes, which threatens almost to swamp the figures. And what is worse, later archæologists have not failed to discover flaws in the pedantic architect’s too insistent details—strange anachronisms like that of placing well-known Pompeiian frescoes on the walls of the palace of Antiochus, together with motives borrowed from Greek vases at least four hundred years earlier in date. The example of this picture has had an important effect on the French school.

But in spite of these defects, the picture imposes itself on the imagination. The hopeless tragedy of the situation is admirably expressed without a trace of theatrical exaggeration. We see a young man, suffering from a grave and mysterious malady, extended upon his bed of suffering. The physician called in by his despairing father stands beside him and examines him. The father himself, overcome with grief, bows his head over his son’s couch. At this moment in the chamber of death a young woman enters. She is young, charming, and melancholy. She is the second wife of the heart-broken father, the mother-in-law of the dying son. And as she walks through the room with languishing steps the physician guesses the horrible truth. The man on the bed is dying of love. By signs which cannot deceive him, the man of science has divined the dreadful passion of the son for his father’s wife. Such was, in fact, the history of Stratonice. The second wife of Seleucus Nicanor was loved by Antiochus, the king’s son by his first marriage. The doctor, Erasistratus, having surprised this secret, declared that the young man would certainly die if Stratonice was not given to him, and his father’s love was great enough to enable him to make this sacrifice.

No other artist than Ingres could have placed this poignant drama on canvas without exciting ridicule. “Stratonice” was exhibited by the Duke of Orleans in one of the galleries of the Pavilion of Marsan, and the public were freely admitted to see it. All the visitors were enchanted with it. The dramatic character of the subject was not displeasing to the Parisian public, and the artists admired the delicate taste, the pathetic grace, and the impeccable style of the workmanship. Above all, the charm of the svelte and supple figure of the heroine, her head bowed under the weight of her culpable beauty, touched all hearts.

Another small picture, known indifferently as “The Odalisque with the Slave” or the “Small Odalisque,” was finished about the same time as the “Stratonice.” This was painted for the artist’s friend M. Marcotte, but is now in the Louvre. In the “Odalisque” as in the “Stratonice” we find a profusion of the details dear to Hittorf, but the figure of the beautiful Circassian curled up on the rich carpet of the harem is a masterpiece of plastic form. In this lovely body the artist has symbolised something of that perverse melancholy, that dangerous voluptuousness, which has found such moving expression in some of Baudelaire’s poems.