Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (born August 29, 1780, Montauban, France, died January 14, 1867 in Paris), artist and icon of cultural conservatism in 19th-century France. Ingres became the main supporter of French neoclassical painting after the death of his mentor Jacques-Louis David. His upscale, carefully painted works were the stylistic opposite of emotionality and color of the modern romantic school. As a monumental historical artist, Ingres sought to perpetuate the classical tradition of Raphael and Nicolas Poussin. However, the spatial and anatomical distortions that characterize his portraits and nudes anticipate many of the most daring formal experiments of 20th century modernism.
Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808-1827
Determined to prove his talent, the young Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres devoted himself to the history of painting, the most respected genre in the Academy. True to his neoclassical training, Ingres chose his subject from Greek mythology, however he departs from the stoic heroes of David. Here you can see how the tragic hero Oedipus encountered the mystery of the Sphinx.
A terrible threat is an ominous pile of human remains, compounded by Oedipus's companion, shown in the background fleeing in horror. Although the picture focuses on a classic male nude, the narrative is more complex than David’s moral universe and offers a step towards the complex psychology of romanticism. The correct answer of Oedipus will allow him to escape death and continue on his way to Thebes, but his fate is doomed.
Fate painting
When Ingres sent the painting to Paris, he received a cool rating; critics argued that the outlines were not sharp enough, the lighting was dim and the relationship between the figures was not enough pronounced.
It should be noted that Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres does not shy away from the dark side of history: the dramatic chiaroscuro created by the rising light gives the picture an ominous overtone. This subtly portends the tragic fate of Oedipus, namely the marriage with his mother Jocasta and a possible death. Sigmund Freud, who then popularized the Greek myth in his formulation of the Oedipus complex, had a printed copy of this painting above the sofa in his office.
La Grande Odalisque, 1814
In his painting “Big Odalisque,” Ingres demonstrates both his academic background and his penchant for experimentation. Indeed, the image of an idealized nude is close to the classic images of Aphrodite in ancient Greece. The leaning woman has been a popular motive since the Renaissance. Titian's “Venus from Urbino” was certainly an important example for Ingres.
Features of the picture
Here, the artist continues this tradition by drawing a figure through a series of twisting lines that emphasize the soft curves of her body, and also place the woman in a rich space, adorned with shiny fabrics and carefully detailed jewelry. Although he depicted a body with a sculptural surface and clean lines associated with neoclassicism, some distortions are clearly visible in this picture.
A woman would need two or three extra vertebrae to achieve such a dramatic, twisted posture, just like the legs of the figure seem disproportionate, the left one is elongated and different in size in the thigh. The result is paradoxical: it is amazingly beautiful and incredibly strange.
The ability of Ingres to combine elements of neoclassical linearity and romantic sensuality, resisting easy categorization, served as a model for future avant-garde artists.
Antique motifs
Ingres painting "The Apotheosis of Homer" was painted in 1827. The artist was instructed to decorate the ceiling in the Louvre to coincide with the opening of the Museum, which was designed to demonstrate the cultural superiority of France and thereby strengthen the legitimacy of his monarch. Critical to this was the creation of a continuum that stretched from the ancient world to modern France, and thus this picture became a project of political and cultural legitimation.
The artist honors Homer as the creator of Western civilization. He sits in the center of the composition, crowned with a laurel wreath of Nika, the goddess of victory, and surrounded by the personifications of his two masterpieces, the Iliad (on the left, the sword lying next to her) and Odyssey (on the right, the oar is leaning against his leg). Homer is surrounded by more than 40 figures of the Western canon, including the Greek sculptor Fidias (holding a hammer), the great philosophers Socrates and Plato (turned to each other in a dialogue to the left of Phidias), Alexander the Great (in the far right corner in gold armor) and others .
Ingres also included figures from recent centuries. Michelangelo sits under Alexander the Great with a drawing board in his hand. William Shakespeare stands next to the artist Nicholas Poussin in the lower left, along with Mozart and the poet Dante. The hero and mastermind of Ingres, Raphael, is dressed in a dark tunic, he joined hands with the Greek artist Apelles, and between them, mostly a hidden figure with a youthful face, is supposedly a portrait of the youngest Jean Auguste. Regardless of whether it is a self-portrait, the artist clearly defined his cultural lineage and confirmed the superiority of classical values.
Imaginary East
The painting of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres "Turkish Bath" is one of his most complex compositions. It seems that bodies go beyond the limits of a round canvas, the tightness of spatial depth multiplies an already large number of bodies. The Ingres demonstrate a continuing interest in colonial topics. The open sensuality of the figures is striking, as their limbs intertwine to show affordable, exotic eroticism.
Here the artist again combines the elements of neoclassicism and romanticism. Its winding lines border the flow of arabesques, although it emphasizes the sculptural surface and precise transitions. Here, he also enjoys artistic freedom in the presentation of human anatomy - the limbs and torsos of the figures are distorted in order to achieve a more harmonious aesthetics, and yet a special manner of the academician is visible in them.
Having never traveled to the Middle East or Africa, Ingres was inspired by the letters of the 18th century aristocrat Lady Mary Montague, copying her notes in the Ottoman Empire into her own notes. In a letter, Montagu described a crowded sauna in Adrianople: “Naked women in different poses ... some talk, others drink coffee or taste sorbet, and many stretch themselves carefree.” In this picture, Ingres translated the feeling of languid relaxation in the bodies of his figures, adorned with turbans and richly embroidered fabrics associated with the imaginary East.
By order of Prince Napoleon in 1852, the painting was originally shown in the Palais Palace, then it was returned to Ingres, who continued to actively modify it until 1863. Finally, he decided to radically change the traditional rectangular format of the painting in tondo, increasing the sense of contraction of the figures. Only in 1905 was the picture shown publicly. Even then, his debut at Salon d'Automne was considered revolutionary. Ingres was enthusiastically received by the developing avant-garde.
The Vow of Louis XIII, 1824
When Ingres left Paris in 1806, he vowed that he would not return until he became a recognized serious and significant master. This work of 1824 contributed to his victorious return. The monumental painting more than four meters in height is a complex topic that combines historical and religious images.
The scene of the Ingres painting is dedicated to a significant moment in the reign of King Louis XIII, when he dedicated France to the Virgin Mary. This act was celebrated as an annual holiday before the revolution of 1789, then, after the Bourbons returned to the French throne, it was restored. It was, therefore, a historical episode with a very specific modern meaning. The painting demonstrates the ability of Ingres to combine the historical and modern translation of the classical scene into the simplified visual vocabulary of the 19th century.
The narrative required that Ingres carefully balance the composition between the earthly kingdom of Louis XIII and the celestial sphere above. Jean Auguste created two different atmospheres to distinguish between spaces, bathing the Virgin Mary in a warm, idealized radiance, and more specifically emphasizing the materiality and texture of Louis XIII.
A year after this success, Ingres was awarded the Legion of Honor and was elected a member of the Academy.
The most beautiful figure of French painting
Work on the painting by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres "Source" was started in Florence around 1820 and was not completed until 1856 in Paris. When he completed the picture, he was already seventy-six years old.
The picture shows a naked girl standing at the cliffs and holding a jug in her hands, from which water flows. Thus, it represents a source of water or a source that in classical literature is sacred to Muses and poetic inspiration. It stands between two flowers and is framed by ivy, a plant of Dionysus, the god of disorder, rebirth and ecstasy. The water that it pours separates it from the viewer, as the rivers mark the boundaries, the intersection of which is symbolically important.
Some art historians believe that in this painting of Ingres there is a “symbolic unity of woman and nature”, where flowering plants and water serve as a backdrop that the artist fills with “secondary attributes” of a woman.