100 Great Artists by Charlotte Gerlings

Author:Charlotte Gerlings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcturus Digital Limited

Louis-François Bertin (detail) (1832)

Seated in a simple chair against a sober backdrop, Bertin the founder and director of the Journal des Débats, epitomizes the liberal bourgeoisie and establishment. This superbly delineated portrait is considered one of the finest of the nineteenth century and certainly a crowning achievement by Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres made his reputation in portraiture, although he believed that history painting would bring him lasting recognition. Having won the Prix de Rome, he lived in Italy for seventeen years, returning to Paris in 1824. There he found little in common with his French contemporaries, who had meanwhile ‘breathed the atmosphere of Romanticism’. Ingres called his younger rival, Delacroix, ‘the apostle of ugliness’. In retaliation, Delacroix declared Ingres had ‘no imagination at all’. Indeed, Ingres had no instinct for narrative and his set pieces suffer for it. Up close, there is a mass of information but no connecting energy.

He had a bourgeois mentality, and yet his works reveal, as Baudelaire admitted, ‘a deeply sensuous nature’. This is why Ingres is so admired. His pictures are painted with amazing physicality; and he relishes every detail of his wealthy sitters’ clothes and jewellery. A supreme example is Madame Moitessier in her floral gown, which took twelve years to paint. Her little daughter was to have been included in the portrait, but she had grown up by the time Ingres finished.

Ingres returned to Rome as Director of the French Academy in 1834. Away from the constant criticism in Paris, he unwrapped his talent for teaching. Like his own tutor, David, he advocated drawing above all: ‘If I had to put a sign over my door, I would write “School of Drawing” and I’m certain that I would create painters.’

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