Masterpiece Sketches by Ingres

Author: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Ingres (1780-1867) was a French painter. In the 19th century, France, as the cradle of bourgeois democratic revolution, showed great activity in various ideological expressions. Art movements and artistic trends rose and fell, complementing the changing political winds, forming the most brilliant scene in European history of the last century and deeply influencing the world. French classicism in art was pushed to its peak by David and his disciple Ingres. In 1780, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was born in Montauban, southern France. His father was a decorative sculptor and painter, and his mother was the daughter of a royal wig maker. In 1786, his ambitious father sent Ingres to a church school to study. In 1791, he entered the Toulouse Academy to study art. In 1794, he became a violinist in an orchestra. In his youth, seeing a copy of Raphael by his teacher, Ingres was moved to tears and has been a lifelong admirer of him since then. In 1797, he entered the studio of the Neoclassical master David and excelled. After graduation, he could have gone to Rome to study, but due to political instability, his trip abroad was delayed. While waiting to study in Rome, in 1805, he created the portrait of Madame Rivière, the family of the magistrate Rivière, whom he had met in Paris. From 1806 to 1820, Ingres studied and created in Rome. If David's classicism was revolutionary classicism, Ingres's classicism was aesthetic classicism. Unlike his teacher, Ingres was indifferent to politics, devoted to his own work, conservative, and stubborn, often attracting attacks from others. He insisted on the conservative academic classicism with the attitude of "art for art's sake," opposing the Romanticism led by Delacroix. Ingres's subjects were not many, and he even repeatedly painted the same subject, using the same modeling. In 1856, the outstanding work "The" (The), symbolizing "the beauty of purity and solemnity," marked the peak of Ingres's art. In 1863, he was awarded the Golden Laurel by his homeland. He died in 1867.