The term "realist," as applied to Ingres, requires explanation, for since his day times have changed, and we now rank him among the idealists, or, to speak more correctly, among the classicists. Certain Philistines would even go so far as to accuse him of being bound down to a formula; that is to say, of being conventional in his manner of painting, although this was the very thing against which he rebelled so vehemently in David.
Now, it is not simply by contrast with that pompous, declamatory, formal, and frigid painter against whom he revolted, that Ingres is a realist, but because he actually did draw his inspiration from reality, because he infused into his work the breath of life. His seeming coldness arises from the fact that it was through line alone that he sought for expression, reducing color to a subordinate rôle. The uniformity of which he is accused, as if he had made use of some one established mold, springs from the loftiness of his style. But his drawing, like his style, even in attaining the very acme of natural beauty, never deviates from the domain of truth, and invariably derives its inspiration from life itself. This is the case even with those celebrated canvases from which he seems to have voluntarily excluded all soul, in order that its everlasting restlessness, its turmoil, and its passion should not disarrange the grand harmony of the composition, those canvases in which his brush-work has the sharp precision of a chisel, and in which his art resembles sculpture almost more than painting. Even in these works, notwithstanding the superficial aspect of rigidity and immobility which strikes the eye, there is perceptible a conscientious submission to nature, and to truth.
It was voluntarily and for a definite esthetic end that Ingres eliminated movement and color, so that line and attitude—in other words, all that which in human beauty least stirs the emotions and appeals most directly to the mind—might reign supreme. "Serenity," he used to say, "is to the body what wisdom is to the soul." Color possesses in itself resources which he despised as if they had been shams. To compose a picture for effect, to select some ingenious or powerful motive and offset it by a symphony of tones, seemed to him beneath the dignity of art. That is why he denounced Delacroix.
To make use of light in a similar way, to dazzle the eye by astonishing effects of chiaroscuro, to bewilder the sight as an orchestra stuns the ear with the clangor of its brass, by breaking black shadows with vivid lights, was in his opinion artistic disloyalty. That is why he placed but a low estimate upon Rembrandt.
To use color as if it were something plastic, to paint with what is called a "full brush," with exaggerated high lights, loaded paint, glazings, and visible brush-strokes, was to him blasphemous. That is why he did not assign a high rank to the Venetians—with the exception of Titian.
To animate painting by qualities purely sensual, to make a lavish display of the gorgeous splendor of brilliant stuffs, rich brocades and velvets, and gold and silver plate, to paint in glowing rosy hues and amid voluptuous surroundings the plumpness of naked flesh, aroused his indignation and his repugnance as if such art were a desecration. That is why he held Rubens in abhorrence. "There is something of the butcher in that painter," he used to say; "his flesh is like fresh meat, and his setting like a butcher's stall."
Such was the force of Ingres' convictions, such the rigorous decrees of his conscience in regard to what he considered the good and the evil in painting, that his violent antipathies were not confined to a man's work, but extended to the man himself, even were he no longer living. "You are my pupils," he would say to the young artists working under him, "therefore you are my friends, and as such you would not bow to one of my enemies were he to pass along the street. Turn away, then, from Rubens whenever you meet him in the galleries, for if you approach him he will be sure to speak evil to you of my teaching and of me."
Going one day before the opening of the Exposition of 1855 into the room especially reserved for his works, and to which the public had not yet been admitted, he suspected that the keeper, in disobedience to orders, had just allowed Delacroix to enter. "Some one has been in here," he cried; "the room smells of brimstone!"
In sacrificing color to line, the charm of light to the eloquence of form, the pleasure of the eye to the enjoyment of the mind, the sensual delight of the palette to the intellectual enjoyment of style, Ingres realized a great ideal, founded as much, perhaps, upon the absence of certain qualities as upon the triumphant presence of certain others. His temperament, so restrained in his color, is revealed in his nervous, vigorous drawing. It is evident from the valuable studies preserved in the Museum of Montauban what tremendous struggles he underwent when he took his pencil in hand. What efforts, what will-power! What frankness and boldness of execution, and what scrupulous conscientiousness in his repeated attempts! There were times when he would weep in utter despair. "I can no longer draw!" he would lament, even at the time when he was at the head of the French school. Color never caused him such agony. He never worried his head about that; it was sure to come, sober and subdued, following the drawing like a docile slave whose duty it is to escort his master, to keep step with him, but at a respectful distance. No great draftsman, he declared, could ever fail to find the color that would best suit the character of his drawing. And again, he said, "I shall write over the door of my studio, 'School of Drawing,' and I shall make painters."...