Small of stature, square of figure, rough of manner, devoid of distinction, Ingres's personality afforded a great contrast to the refinement of his taste and the charm of his feminine figures. I can hardly conceive how a man thus built could show such delicacy in the choice of his subjects; how those short, thick fingers could draw such lovely, graceful forms.
Ingres hated academic conventionality; he mingled the Florentine and Greek schools; he sought the ideal not outside of reality but in its very essence, in the reconciliation of style with nature. Color he considered of secondary importance; he not only subordinated it voluntarily to drawing, but he did not have a natural gift for it. Ingres is the artist who has best expressed the voluptuousness not of flesh but of form; who has felt feminine beauty most profoundly and chastely.
CALAMATTA'S STUDIO
From 'Contemporary Artists'
I can still see Lamennais, with his worn-out coat, his round back, his yellow, parchment-like face, his eyes sparkling beneath a forehead imprinted with genius, and resembling somewhat Hoffmann's heroes. George Sand sometimes visited us, and it seemed to me that her presence lighted up the whole studio. She always spoke to me, for she knew that I was the brother of a distinguished writer, and when she looked over my plate I trembled like a leaf.
Thus our calm sedentary life was enlivened by an occasional sunbeam; and when I was hard at work with my graver, my mind was nourished by the minds of others. Giannone, the poet, read his commentaries on Shakespeare to us, and Mercure always had a witty retort in that faulty French which is so amusing in an Italian mouth. Calamatta would listen in silence, his eyes glued to his drawing of the 'Joconde,' at which he worked on his good days.