As compared with the principles thus laid down, Ingres represents the revulsion towards that formalism which had borne sway over the greater part of the history of French art. “Painting is nothing more than drawing,” said Poussin. “Had God intended to place colour at the same height as form,” wrote Charles Blanc, “He would not have failed to furnish His masterpiece, Man, with all the hues of the humming-bird.” Once more, instead of the glowing colour of the Romantic school, absorbing the form into itself, the firm stroke of the outline was set forth; instead of its pathos, breathing forth passionate emotion, men returned to study the chill tranquillity of stone. Once more dramatic composition and mastery over movement were held in abhorrence, as incompatible with that pursuit of plastic beauty which was the highest goal of art. The only point in question was, how to avoid the one-sidedness of Classicism. David, as a child of the Revolution, had naturally been limited to Ancient Rome; but now that the legitimate monarchy had been re-established there was no reason why one should not revere, not only pagan, but also Christian Rome, and in Raphael and Michael Angelo the maturest blossom of the latter. Thus the Classical school was enriched by Ingres with features of greater vivacity. He entered into a direct relationship with the great Italian masters, while David had none save with the rigid Roman antique. By him the Classical severity of David was relaxed, the refractory sharpness of the outlines relieved by a treatment of form which had the effect of making every figure appear to be worked in metal.

INGRES.   BERTIN THE ELDER.
(By permission of M. Jules Bapst, the owner of the picture.)

Ingres was born in 1781, under the Ancien Régime. As a young man he lived through the triumphs of the Empire and the Classical school, and it was only natural that he should become David’s pupil. In 1796 he entered his studio, and studied there with such assiduity that he never noticed what was taking place in that of Gros. When he went to Italy he studied there the masters whom his own teacher had arrogantly despised. He learned from the Cinquecento how to draw and model more accurately, more firmly, and at the same time with a more intimate grasp of the subject than was usual in the school of David. This innovation made him a progressive Classicist, and gave him, during the early years of the Restoration, almost the appearance of an assailant and revolutionary. Himself the incarnation of the academic spirit, he had to resign himself to see his first works rejected by the Salon, a fact which did not deter him from continuing to work obstinately at his easel. “Je compte sur ma vieillesse; elle me vengea.” And this revenge was granted him in the fullest measure.

When one has seen the outward appearance of a man, one knows his character, his spirit, and his genius. Ingres’ portrait of himself contains the analysis of his art. He was quite a small man, of a swarthy complexion, with features sharp and as if cast in bronze. His thick black hair stood up stubbornly on end, so that he had to grease it carefully every day. Under hair of this kind there is almost always an obstinate brain. The jaws projected, as is the case with men endowed with a strong will. The eyes were large and piercing, with that bold eagle-glance which fills parents with fond hopes, but does not touch the hearts of young women. When he appeared to be excited, it was only the excitement of work expressing itself in him. This little man, in his large cloak, seemed to say when he stood at his easel, pencil in hand: “I shall be a great painter, for I am determined to be one.” He kept his word. Strength of will, hard work, study, obstinacy, patience—these are the elements of which Ingres’ talent is compounded. “Vouloir, c’est pouvoir,” was his motto. One would think Buffon had had him in mind in that passage in which he defines genius as patience. The trinity-in-unity of his qualities consisted of correctness, balance, exactness; qualities which go to make rather a great architect or mathematician than an interesting painter.

Ingres’ range of subjects was unusually wide. Pictures on themes taken from antiquity (“Œdipus and the Sphinx” and “Virgil reading the Æneid”); costume pictures (“Henry IV and his Children” and the “Entry of Charles V into Paris”); religious paintings (Madonnas, “Christ giving the Keys to St. Peter,” and “St. Symphorian”); nude female figures (the “Odalisque,” the “Liberation of Angelica,” and “The Source”); allegories (“The Apotheosis of Homer” and “The Apotheosis of Napoleon”); pictures of public functions (“Bonaparte as First Consul” and “Napoleon on the Throne”); and even a painting taken from the life (“Pius VII in the Sistine Chapel”), are included in the list. Yet, notwithstanding his astonishing diversity of themes, there is hardly an artist more one-sided in his principles. Ingres thought exclusively of purely plastic art: beauty of form and harmony of line alone attracted him; he was insensible to the charm of colour. His standpoint was the Institute of Rome; the Italian Cinquecento the exclusive object of his worship. He carried this study as far as plagiarism, and as director of the Roman Academy made free with the intellectual property of the Cinquecento masters, as if they had lived only on his account.

When Delacroix was painting the “Expulsion of Heliodorus” in Saint Sulpice, he put forth the whole strength of his creative genius to avoid all reminiscence of Raphael’s fresco. Ingres’ power of invention consisted in discovering, with a weird certainty, whether the subject of which he wished to treat had already been painted by an Italian or other Classical master. The picture “Jupiter and Thetis,” of 1811, is put together after a design on a Greek vase, and represents in its studied archaism the Æginetan period of his art. The “Vow of Louis XIII,” of 1824, was his confession of faith as regards the Cinquecento. The motive was taken from the Madonna di Foligno, the curtains from the Madonna di San Sisto, the floating angels from the Madonna del Baldacchino, and the candlesticks as well as the little angels with the inscribed tablet are from the same source. It is all beautiful, of course, for it is all Raphael; only, it would have been more rational if Ingres had lived in the time of Raphael instead of in the nineteenth century. One would take the picture to have been painted under Raphael’s eyes, and it bears to his works the same relation as Raphael’s earlier pictures do to Perugino’s. The “Christ giving the Keys to St. Peter” is also put together out of elements derived from the school of Urbino. In his “St. Symphorian,” which was belauded as the ne plus ultra of style, he turned by way of variety to the imitation of Michael Angelo: the action is violent, the muscles swollen. The “Apotheosis of Homer” is an admirable lecture in archæology, a sitting of the great academy of genius, in which the poses are so fine and the heads so full of marble idealism that in comparison with it Raphael’s “School of Athens” has the effect of the wildest naturalism.

Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
INGRES.STUDY FOR THE ODALISQUE IN THE LOUVRE.INGRES.THE SOURCE.

Thus Father Ingres stands forth as a cold, stiff, academic painter, as a doctrinaire who has not progressed much further than the much-reviled David. He represents, as Th. Rousseau said, only to a moderate degree the good old art which we have lost. In the words of Diaz: “Let him be shut up with me in a tower, without engravings, and I wager that his canvas will remain untouched, whilst I shall succeed in producing a picture.” He possessed an arid ability which leaves one cold in presence of even his most important works. How lifeless is the effect produced by his paintings of nude single figures, his “Odalisque” and his “Freeing of Andromeda,” which brought him especial fame! Ingres could not paint flesh, and in this respect he is indicative of an enormous retrogression as compared with Prudhon. The striving after sculpturesque beauty, and, in connection therewith, the repression of all individuality, became in him almost a religion.

One finds it difficult to-day to account for the fame which once belonged to his picture of “The Source,” the nude figure of a standing girl pouring water out of an urn that rests on her left shoulder and is steadied by her right arm raised over her head. The picture undoubtedly exhibits qualities of draughtsmanship which in recent days Ingres alone possessed in so high a degree. But when, in pursuit of his Classical conception, he had eliminated every touch of nature, he proceeded to destroy the rest of the impression by the cold violet tones which are not only condemned by colourists, but which even Raphael would have considered false and ugly. Here, as in all his female figures, he attains to a certain grace, but it is an animal, expressionless grace. Skilful as he was in delineating the muscles of the human body, he was yet absolutely incapable of painting heads expressive of feeling or emotion. He depicted the form in itself, the abstract, typical, absolute form. He was dominated only by a love for the beauté suprême, so that when he was in presence of nature he could not refrain from purifying and generalising. Everywhere we see beautiful lines, bodies modelled with admirable skill, but we never enter into any closer relationship with his figures. They do not live our life or breathe our atmosphere; they have not our thoughts: they are foreign to all that is human. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Member of the Institute, Senator, etc., the stylist held in honour as a superior being, the high-priest of pure form and outline, will in all times command the esteem, and in some respects the admiration, of the student of the history of art; the enthusiasm, never.