Baschet.
INGRES.ŒDIPUS AND THE SPHINX.

Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
INGRES.PAGANINI.INGRES.MLLE. DE MONTGOLFIER.

And yet, notwithstanding all this, I am an enthusiastic admirer of Ingres. Indeed, it has happened to me, in the collection of engravings at the Louvre, to catch myself saying: “Ingres! great, beloved Master! I have much to ask your pardon; for you were one of the greatest and most refined spirits to whom the century has given birth.” For I doubt whether any one down to the present time has rightly understood the mysterious figure of Ingres, the man who in his youth was enraptured by “l’esprit, la grâce, l’originalité de Vataux et la délicieuse couleur de ses tableaux,” and who, at a later time, not because of failing powers but deliberately and of set purpose, adopted a calmer system of colour tones; of this Classicist par excellence, who is counted among the greatest artists, in the familiar and graceful style, in the history of art.

Ingres is one of the rare masters whom even their opponents are forced to admire. In the stern, sculpturesque modelling of his naked figures he displays remarkable power. His painting, also, has a curiously intimate appeal, due to its cool, metallic harmonies of colour—light blue, rose, and pale yellow in particular.

But above all Ingres commands attention by his portraits. From his first residence at Rome, that is, from the beginning of the century, he painted portraits which imprint themselves on the memory like medals struck in metallic sharpness in the style of Mantegna. Here too he is unequal, at times cold and commonplace, but usually quite admirable. In these paintings, cast as it were in bronze, there is something that comes from the fresh original source of all art; they have that vein of realism by which the vigorous idealism of Raphael is distinguished from the conventional idealism of a professor of historical painting. Here one finds real treasures, creations of remarkable vital power, and in admirable taste. They show that Ingres, apparently so systematic, had a profound love for living nature, and they ensure the immortality of his name. His historical pictures are works which compel our esteem, but his portraits are splendid creations which can truly stand comparison with the great old masters.

So far back as 1806 there appeared in the Salon his likeness of Napoleon I, with his bloodless, corpse-like face, enchased with such art that Delécluze called it a Gothic medal. The Emperor is seated like a wax figure upon the throne, surrounded by the attributes of majesty—stiff, motionless as a Byzantine idol. It was followed in 1807 by the portrait of Mme. Devauçay, which even to-day impresses the beholder most pleasingly, notwithstanding the pedantic style in which it is painted. One feels in it fire and youthfulness, the enthusiasm and ardour of a new convert, who has for the first time discovered in nature beauties other than those he had learnt to see in the Academy. Moreover, he possessed a very distinguished and personal taste in drawing. The face is of exquisite grace, the eyes tenderly seductive and delicately veiled. Ingres is already announced as he was afterwards to be.

In Holbein’s portraits the whole German community of his time has been handed down to us; in Van Dyck’s, the aristocracy of England under Charles I. So also Ingres has depicted for us, with all its failings and all its virtues, the middle-class hierarchy of Louis Philippe’s reign, which felt itself to be the first estate, the summit of the nation, felt sure of the morrow, was proud of itself, of its intelligence and energy, which pursued with correctness its moral course of life, revered order and hated all excess—including that of the colourist. The same spirit animated this splendid bourgeois of art. His “Bertin the Elder” is justly his most celebrated, enduring work; not the mere painted petrifaction of a newspaper potentate, but one of those portraits which bring a whole epoch home to the mind. It tells of the triumph of the bourgeoisie under the Monarchy of July more fully and clearly than does Louis Blanc’s Histoire de Dix Ans. In the best of humours, with the four-square solidity of a knowledge of his own worth, which is full of character, this modern newspaper demi-god sits on his chair as on a throne, the throne of the Journal des Débats, like a bourgeois Jupiter Tonans, with his hands on his knees.

Baschet.
INGRES.THE FORESTIER FAMILY.