Ingres

by A. J. Finberg

In the spring of 1841 Ingres returned to Paris. He found his reputation increased by the success of the “Stratonice.” His brother artists hailed him as their leader. A banquet was offered to him by all the artists present in the capital, painters, sculptors, and architects, the only prominent absentee being Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the Romantics. Delacroix did not wish to participate in the triumph of his rival, and this triumph, so unanimously accorded, only served to widen the breach between the two masters. Henceforth the struggle between them became more bitter. Each party pursued the other without mercy, neither disdaining to use any kind of weapon that came to hand.

Fortified by the homage offered to him, Ingres returned to his work with renewed ardour. The King asked him to paint a portrait of the Duke of Orleans, and Ingres, grateful for the Duke’s kindness with regard to the “Stratonice,” took much more pains over this portrait than he usually took with commissions of this kind. This was the last male portrait that Ingres painted, with the exception of a small monochrome medallion of the Prince Jéròme Napoléon, which he executed in 1855. But, on the other hand, he became the favourite painter of the exalted dames of the Monarchy of July and of the Second Empire, though very much against his will, for he regarded portrait-painting as a waste of time, and wished to devote himself entirely to his grand historical and religious compositions. Nevertheless, he painted some fine portraits of beautiful women—Madame d’Haussonville in 1845, Madame Frédéric Reisat in 1846, Madame James de Rothschild in 1848, Madame Gonse and Madame Moitessier in 1852, the Princess de Broglie in 1853, a second half-length portrait (the first was a full-length) of Madame Moitessier in 1856, and finally, in 1859, that of his second wife.

PLATE VIII.—JEANNE D’ARC
(In the Louvre)

The picture of “Joan of Arc assisting at the Consecration of Charles VII. in the Cathedral of Reims” was painted for the gallery of Versailles, but is now in the Louvre. It is signed “J. Ingres, 1854.” The figure, the maid’s squire, standing immediately behind the kneeling priest, is said to be a portrait of the artist himself.

Soon after the portrait of the Duke of Orleans was finished he received another royal commission, the “Jesus among the Doctors,” which the Queen Marie-Amélie wished to present to the Château de Bizy. The work, badly conceived at the beginning, was still unfinished when the Revolution drove from France the patroness who had commissioned it. It remained almost forgotten in a corner of the artist’s studio till 1862, when Ingres decided to finish it and present it to the museum of his natal city. Of all Ingres’ productions, it is perhaps the only one where the inspiration and execution both seem feeble.

While he had been still in Rome, in 1839, Ingres had received from the Duc de Luynes a commission to decorate the great room at the Château of Dampierre with two large mural paintings representing “The Age of Gold” and “The Age of Iron.” He was delighted with the commission, as he was always dreaming of reviving the great traditions of decorative painting. He made numberless studies for these subjects, many of them among the most beautiful of his drawings. But as the painting had to be done actually on the walls at Dampierre, the work progressed very slowly. Years flew by, and the artist’s enthusiasm cooled. The noble Duke and the sensitive and proud painter could not get along well under the same roof. Ingres thought himself slighted on one occasion (in 1850) and brusquely threw up the commission, leaving his work unfinished. There exists of this gigantic work only a sketch at Dampierre, an infinite number of drawings at the Museum of Montauban, and a little painting executed from these drawings in 1862, a very feeble representation of what the definitive work would have been. As for “The Age of Iron,” we have only the preliminary studies.

As if to revenge himself for the loss of his promised masterpiece, Ingres now took up again a number of the works he had sketched in his youth and set himself to finish them or repaint them. He also busied himself painting replicas of others which had passed out of his hands but with which he was not entirely satisfied. He painted thus a repetition of the “Apotheosis of Homer,” adding a number of fresh figures and substituting others for some of the poets and artists of his first choice. After much anxious reflection and discussion with his pupils, he decided to banish Shakespeare, as he had already banished Goethe, from the group of the immortals. He also painted replicas of his “Sistine Chapel,” of “Roger delivering Angelica,” and variations of his “Œdipus” and “Stratonice.” He also painted four or five slightly different versions of the figure of the Virgin in his early picture of the “Vow of Louis XIII.” One of these developed into a picture of “The Virgin between St. Nicholas and St. Alexander”—a subject the Emperor of Russia had asked him to treat. We find another version of the same type in “The Virgin with the Host,” which forms one of our illustrations. In no other work of Ingres is his passionate admiration of Raphael more clearly displayed.

One of the new works which caused the liveliest sensation was “The Birth of Venus” or “Venus Anadyomene.” This had been begun forty years before, at the time of the early “Bathers” and “Odalisque.” The beautiful white body of the goddess detaches itself from the harmonious blue of the sea and sky, and groups of amorini flutter round and caress her youthful form. One of these delicious attendants offers her a mirror, another kisses the feet of the young goddess, while a third embraces her knees. It would be difficult to imagine anything more graciously tender or more natural than the infantile figures.