Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art, influencing Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other modernists.
Paintings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Grande Odalisque (1810)
Grande Odalisque, also known as Une Odalisque or La Grande Odalisque, is an oil painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres depicting an odalisque, or concubine in 1814. Ingres' contemporaries considered the work to signify Ingres' break from Neoclassicism, indicating a shift toward exotic Romanticism.
Grande Odalisque received heavy criticism when it was first shown, and is renowned for the elongated proportions and lack of anatomical realism. The painting is currently owned by the Louvre Museum in Paris, which purchased the work in 1899.
The Turkish Bath (1862)
The Turkish Bath (Le Bain turc) is an oil painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, initially completed between 1852 and 1859, but modified in 1862. The painting depicts a group of nude women at a pool in a harem. It has an erotic style that evokes both the Near East and earlier western styles associated with mythological subject matter. The painting expands on a number of motifs that Ingres had explored in earlier paintings, in particular The Valpinçon Bather (1808) and La Grande odalisque (1814) and is an example of Romanticism.
The work is signed and dated 1862, when Ingres was around 82 years old. He altered the original rectangular format and changed the painting to a tondo. A photograph of its original state, taken by Charles Marville, survives.
The Source (Ingres) (1856)
The Source (French: La Source, meaning "The Water Source or The Spring") is an oil painting on canvas by French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The work was begun in Florence around 1820 and not completed until 1856, in Paris. When Ingres completed The Source, he was seventy-six years old, already famous, and president of the École des Beaux-Arts. The pose of the nude may be compared with that of another by Ingres, the Venus Anadyomene (1848), and is a reimagination of the Aphrodite of Cnidus or Venus Pudica. Two of Ingres' students, painters Paul Balze and Alexandre Desgoffe, helped to create the background and water jar.
The painting depicts a nude woman standing upright between an opening in the rocks and holding in her hands a pitcher, from which water flows. She thus represents a water source or spring, for which source is the normal French word, and which, in classical literature, is sacred to the Muses and a source of poetic inspiration. She stands between two flowers, with their "vulnerability to males who wish to pluck them", and is framed by ivy, plant of Dionysus the god of disorder, regeneration, and ecstasy. The water she pours out separates her from the viewer, as rivers mark boundaries of which the crossing is symbolically important.
The Valpinçon Bather (1808)
The Valpinçon Bather (Fr: La Grande Baigneuse) is an 1808 painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), held in the Louvre since 1879. Painted while the artist was studying at the French Academy in Rome, it was originally titled Seated Woman but later became known after one of its nineteenth-century owners.
Ingres had earlier painted female nudes, such as his Bathing Woman of 1807, yet this work is widely regarded as his first great treatment of the subject. As in the previous smaller work, the model is shown from behind; however, The Valpinçon Bather lacks the earlier painting's overt sexuality, instead depicting a calm and measured sensuality. Ingres returned to the form of this figure a number of times in his life; culminating in his The Turkish Bath of 1863, where the central figure in the foreground playing a mandolin echoes in rhythm and tone the model of the Valpinçon bather.
Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne (1806)
Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne (French: Napoléon Ier sur le trône impérial) is an 1806 portrait of Napoleon I of France in his coronation costume, painted by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
The painting shows Napoleon as emperor, in the costume he wore for his coronation, seated on a circular-backed throne with armrests adorned with ivory balls. In his right hand, he holds the scepter of Charlemagne. In his left hand, that of justice. On his head is a golden laurel wreath, similar to one worn by Julius Caesar. He also wears an ermine hood under the great collar of the Légion d'honneur, a gold-embroidered satin tunic and an ermine-lined purple velvet cloak decorated with gold bees. The coronation sword is in its scabbard and held up by a silk scarf. The subject wears white shoes embroidered in gold and resting on a cushion. The carpet under the throne displays an imperial eagle. The signature INGRES P xit is in the bottom left, and ANNO 1806 in the bottom right.
Portrait of Madame Moitessier (1856)
Madame Moitessier is a portrait of Marie-Clotilde-Inès Moitessier (née de Foucauld) begun in 1844 and completed in 1856 by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The portrait, which depicts Madame Moitessier seated, has been in the collection of the National Gallery in London since 1946.
Madame Moitessier is also the title of a second portrait by Ingres, which depicts her standing. That version was painted in 1851 and is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Venus Anadyomene (Ingres) (1808)
Venus Anadyomene is a painting by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It is now held at the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. It is a female nude of the Venus Anadyomene type, showing the goddess Venus rising from the sea.
Ingres began the painting in 1808 during his stay in Rome at the French Academy. The first preparatory drawings showed Venus in the Venus Pudica position, standing and covering her breasts with her hands. The pose was inspired by Botticelli's The Birth of Venus – Ingres visited Florence and the Uffizi in 1805 and could have seen the painting there. A drawing of 1806 then shows the goddess with her arms in the air and her hair in her hands, a pose the artist also used in his 1856 The Source.
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832)
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin is an 1832 oil on canvas painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It depicts Louis-François Bertin (1766–1841), the French writer, art collector and director of the pro-royalist Journal des débats. Ingres completed the portrait during his first period of success; having achieved acclaim as a history painter, he accepted portrait commissions with reluctance, regarding them as a distraction from more important work. Bertin was Ingres' friend and a politically active member of the French upper-middle class. Ingres presents him as a personification of the commercially minded leaders of the liberal reign of Louis Philippe I. He is physically imposing and self-assured, but his real-life personality shines through – warm, wry and engaging to those who had earned his trust.
The painting had a prolonged genesis. Ingres agonised over the pose during several preparatory sketches. The final work captures the sitter's character, conveying a restless energy and imposing bulk. He sits in three-quarter profile against a brown ground lit from the right, his fingers are pronounced and highly detailed, while the polish of his chair reflects light from an unseen window. It is an unflinchingly realistic depiction of ageing and emphasises the furrowed skin and thinning hair of an overweight man who yet maintains his resolve and determination.
The Apotheosis of Homer (Ingres) (1827)
The Apotheosis of Homer is a grand 1827 painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, now exhibited at the Louvre as INV 5417. The symmetrical composition depicts Homer being crowned by a winged figure personifying Victory or the Universe. Forty-four additional figures pay homage to the poet in a kind of classical confession of faith.
A state commission to decorate a ceiling of the musée Charles X at the Louvre (now the ancient Egyptian galleries), it formed part of a renovation project commissioned by Charles X to have himself remembered in the grand tradition of Bourbon building works at the Louvre. A condition of the commission was that it was to be completed within a year's time. Upon receiving the commission, Ingres conceived the idea for his painting quickly—it was a source of pride to him that he had required only an hour to establish the broad outlines of his composition in a sketch. The subsequent care he took in developing his idea is evident in more than 100 drawings and numerous painted sketches for it that survive, in which he fixed the details more and more precisely. Ingres's level of research can be seen in the painting's portrait of Nicolas Poussin, which is directly copied from Poussin's 1650 self-portrait now in the Louvre.
Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière (1806)
The portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière was painted in 1806 by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and today hangs in the Louvre.
It is the third of three portraits of the Rivière family that the artist painted that year. Caroline's father, Philibert Rivière, was a successful court official under Napoleon's empire and sought to commemorate himself, his wife and daughter through a commission with the then young and rising artist—Ingres's portraits of Philibert and his wife are also still extant. Although Ingres favoured subject matter drawn from history or Greek legend, at this early stage in his career, he earned his living mainly through commissions from wealthy patrons.
Oedipus and the Sphinx (Ingres) (1800)
Oedipus and the Sphinx is a painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Originally a student work painted in 1808, it was enlarged and completed in 1827. The painting depicts Oedipus explaining the riddle of the Sphinx. An oil painting on canvas, it measures 189 x 144 cm, and is in the Louvre, which acquired it in 1878.
The painting was begun in Rome, where Ingres had arrived belatedly in 1806 after winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1801. Working in a studio on the grounds of the Villa Medici, Ingres continued his studies and, as required of every winner of the Prix, he sent works at regular intervals to Paris so his progress could be judged. As his envoi of 1808 Ingres sent a life-size Figure of Oedipus and The Valpinçon Bather, hoping by these two paintings to demonstrate his mastery of the male and female nude. The academicians were moderately critical of the treatment of light in both paintings, and considered the figures to be insufficiently idealized.
The Princesse de Broglie (1853)
The Princesse de Broglie (French: La Princesse de Broglie [la pʁɛ̃.sɛs də bʁɔj]) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It was painted between 1851 and 1853, and shows Pauline de Broglie, who adopted the courtesy title 'Princesse'. Born Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, she married Albert de Broglie, the future 28th prime minister of France, in 1845. Pauline was 28 at the time of the painting's completion. She was highly intelligent and widely known for her beauty, but she suffered from profound shyness and the painting captures her melancholia. Pauline contracted tuberculosis in her early 30s and died in 1860 aged 35. Although Albert lived until 1901, he was heartbroken and did not remarry.
Ingres undertook a number of preparatory pencil sketches for the commission, each of which captures her personality and taste. They show her in various poses, including standing, and in differently styled dresses. The final painting is considered one of Ingres's finest later-period portraits of women, along with the Portraits of Comtesse d'Haussonville, Baronne de Rothschild and Madame Moitessier. As with many of Ingres's portraits of women, details of the costume and setting are rendered with precision while the body seems to lack a solid bone structure. The painting is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and is signed and dated 1853.