The Art of Ingres

CHARLES BLANC 'GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS' 1868

We have heard eminent artists, who in other respects admired Ingres, deplore the influence he exercised upon the French school of painting by reason of the despotic nature of his teaching and the fact that his eccentric sayings, regarded as they were as oracular, unfortunately carried with them in the eyes of his prejudiced followers all the weight of serious opinions. Such criticism has given us food for thought, and it is not without having duly considered it that we now express our views regarding Ingres and the rôle he played as leader of the French school....

The violent reaction of the romanticists against the too-sculptural tendencies of David led, as all reactions do lead, to another extreme. Arriving in France, as he did after his sojourn in Italy, in the midst of the fray, Ingres saw with astonishing clearness in what respects the school of David had erred, and also what justice there was at bottom in the revolt of the romanticists. He saw that in a generalization of form, in an adoption of the type of statues, of the Greek profile, and of sculpturesque draperies, a cold and conventional quality had been imparted to the painting of his former co-disciples. Struck by what was natural, interesting, and essentially naïve in the work of the Italian artists of the fifteenth century, he felt that true style was only to be obtained from a profound study of nature, which alone produces an endless variety of forms; that any general type of beauty must be modified by a reference to the individual—if need be, even by characteristic ugliness—and that, finally, universal truth could be attained only by a treatment of individual truth. In this he was more of a painter than David; he reformed the reform of his master.

Ingres, then, was the first to have a conception of actual truth; the first to know that in art the ideal is the quintessence of the real; that style should be derived not from erudition, but from life; that it may be acquired from the most commonplace models; that it must be human....

In leading the French school back to a study of nature, he purged it from two evils, called in the language of the studios chic and poncif. The first signifies the fashion of painting from memory, from practice, without consulting nature. The second signifies the habit of repeating forms learned by heart. From these two banes of art Ingres delivered painting in France, thereby rendering it an inestimable service. While giving satisfaction to the romanticists in recognizing that their reaction was to some extent justifiable, he perceived at the same time, and just as clearly, that romanticism was a return to the decadence. Indeed, since it had burst into being, only those painters were admired who, essentially imitators, were called in Italy naturalisti. Caravaggio, Ribera, Guercino, Zurbaran, Manfredi, Solimena—all were lauded. Nothing was talked of but "solid painting," "solidity of technique," "painting with a full brush." The sublime beauties of fresco were forgotten, as were the men who had found expression in the grand, the universal art of design. It seemed, forsooth, as if art had begun in the seventeenth century, for in the estimation of these innovators the first of all masters, after Veronese, was Rubens, and according to them Rubens had but one equal—Rembrandt. What they admired in Rembrandt, however, was not exactly his genius, his poetic invention, and the delicacy of his marvelously expressive drawing; but the freedom, the boldness, of his style, the so-called secrets of his etchings, the intensity of his famous lights, contrasting with the transparency of his underpainting—all the alchemy of his mysterious methods.

From these departures from the established methods of the French school Ingres in his turn reacted, and as he was convinced that he was right and was by nature violent, he reacted with conviction and with violence. He loved nature but not naturalism. He was willing that his pupils should salute Rubens, but they must not pause before him in the Louvre, but pass on to Perugino, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto. All beautiful variations of color were to his mind inferior to the eloquence of form. The affectation of searching for effect seemed to him a means of degrading painting to the level of the theatrical. To the decorators of Venice he preferred the draftsmen of Florence; to Delacroix, he preferred Ingres.

Thus the painter of 'The Vow of Louis xiii.' and of 'St. Symphorien' stood half way between the cold idealism of the classicists and the brutal realism of the romanticists. It is but just to say, however, that in his teaching Ingres was wholly one-sided, thinking no doubt that to gain a little, much must be demanded. In teaching that "drawing is everything, that all may be expressed by line, even smoke," he tended towards painting without relief, devoid of all planes. By dint of preaching austerity of tone and training his pupils to beware of colorists, he veiled his whole school in gray. The logical outcome of this was to drive painting into an extreme directly opposed to that which he wished to avoid; that is to say, into the dryness of sharply defined contours and a contempt for methods purely picturesque.

Such was unquestionably the harmful side of Ingres' influence. But, on the other hand, it was he who taught, by his works even more than by his words, that nature is idealized by freeing her from all unimportant details, by selecting only her significant traits; that in order not to petrify forms by generalizing them, we must simplify types by individual characteristics taken directly from life; that drawing, which appeals to the heart, is superior to color, which pleases the eye; that nude figures are more beautiful than clothed; that drapery is more artistic than costume; that the portrayal of human passions, in that they are eternal, is superior to any ethnographical representation of changing manners. In a word, that there is a higher and a lower order of art....

So powerful was the influence of this great artist as leader of the French school that it extended to all branches of art. Painting, sculpture, engraving, even architecture and music, were affected by his love of the great, his feeling for the beautiful. He cared for and he advocated what is everywhere purest and finest: Greek art of the most perfect periods, the marbles of Phidias, the frescos of Raphael, the engravings of Marcantonio, the music of Gluck and of Mozart, the poetry of Homer.

As a painter Ingres was no doubt unequal, but he was always admirable in some respect and always a master, even in his faults. Vast compositions were beyond the powers of his imagination, whose fire burned but briefly. It was only with difficulty and after many changes and hesitations that he was able to compose his pictures, but the composition was achieved with a severe taste and a sure touch, and was founded on some tradition carefully chosen and faithfully carried out. His short-breathed genius excelled above all in compositions of only one or two figures, such as 'Œdipus,' 'The Bather,' 'La Source,' 'Venus Anadyomene.'...

Drawing was the strongest point of Ingres' genius, and in it the most diverse qualities are manifested: sometimes it is exquisitely delicate and naïve, sometimes keen and incisive, as in his sketches which are incomparable in what might be called their flavor; sometimes bold, magistral, and striking, sometimes violent and fierce, sometimes suave, tender, and voluptuous.

Color and chiaroscuro were his vulnerable points. His pictures often lack atmosphere, depth, and picturesque quality. The tendency, however, to impart a gray tone to his canvas, the monotony of his palette, was not a mistake of which he was guilty throughout his career. If he did not possess that orchestration of color which was the supreme gift of Eugène Delacroix, he nevertheless shows some charming subtleties and happy variations in his local tones.

Finally, as regards Ingres' touch, it is supple and light, delicate without being thin, expressive and unlabored in his painting of the nude, and exceedingly skilful in the rendering of accessories and of all that calls for elegance in execution. His portraits, notably those of women, are striking proofs of this.

Ingres will live forever because he frequently approaches Raphael in the beauty of his drawing, because, if inferior to Poussin in expression through ordonnance, he is sometimes his superior in expression through gesture, as also in his search for and attainment of beauty. And he will live because he has rivaled Holbein in portraiture, surpassed David in style, equaled Prud'hon in grace, and created certain forms which in their grandeur seem to be descended from the frescos of Michelangelo. Yes, whatever may be the inconstancy of fame, whatever may be the ideas which are to govern future generations, it may be affirmed that Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres will never be deposed from the place which he won by a hard struggle, by the force of his genius—a place that is not only on a plane with the painters who have given luster to the French school, but near those who have been the glory of the Renaissance.—ABRIDGED FROM THE FRENCH

HENRY LAPAUZE 'MÉLANGES SUR L'ART FRANÇAIS'

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."...

It has been said of Ingres that he was a Greek who had strayed from antiquity into our own times. We know, however, that nature does not produce geniuses at haphazard, but that every great creator expresses the thoughts, ideas, and aspirations of his time. Ingres was no exception to this law. Not only was he the child of his century, but he was its representative, both in the classic reaction and the romantic impulse; and as in his well-balanced mind the two tendencies were modified one by the other, the result was this great and harmonious genius which is on a plane superior to the feelings and passions of his epoch, into which, nevertheless, his intrepid spirit boldly plunged.—FROM THE FRENCH

RICHARD MUTHER 'THE HISTORY OF MODERN PAINTING'

I doubt whether up to the present time any one has rightly understood the mysterious figure of Ingres, of the man who in his youth was enraptured by "the spirit, the grace, the originality of Watteau and the delicious color of his pictures," and who, at a later time, not because of incapacity, but out of deliberate intention, introduced discords of color into his paintings; of this classicist par excellence, who is counted among the greatest artists, in the familiar and graceful style, who are recorded in the history of art.

Like David, Ingres has survived as a portrait-painter only. Like him, when he found himself face to face with nature, he relented, and forgot the strict system which he had elaborated for his great pictures. He has painted portraits which imprint themselves on the memory like medals, struck in metallic sharpness. Here too he is unequal, often cold and commonplace, but more frequently quite admirable. In these paintings, cast as it were in bronze, there is something that comes from the fresh original source of all art; they have that vein of realism by which the vigorous idealism of Raphael is distinguished from the conventional idealism of a professor of historical painting. Here one finds real treasures, creations of remarkable vital power, and in admirable taste. They show that Ingres, apparently so systematic, had a profound love for living nature, and they insure the immortality of his name. His historical pictures are works which compel our esteem, but his portraits are splendid creations which can truly stand comparison with the great old masters....

In Holbein's portraits the whole German community of his time has been handed down to us; in those of Van Dyck, the aristocracy of England under Charles i. So also Ingres has depicted for us, with all its failings and all its virtues, the middle-class hierarchy of Louis Philippe's reign, which felt itself to be the first estate, the summit of the nation, felt sure of the morrow, was proud of itself, of its intelligence and energy, which pursued with correctness its moral course of life, revered order and hated all excess—including that of the colorists. It is this same spirit which animated Ingres himself, that splendid "bourgeois" of art. His portrait of Bertin is justly his most celebrated work; not merely the painted petrifaction of a newspaper potentate, but also one of those portraits which bring a whole epoch home to one's mind....

But however highly one must estimate the importance of such a work, Ingres is nevertheless at his highest, not in his painted likenesses, but in his portrait-drawings. In the former the raw colors are still, at times, offensive. The faces sometimes have the conventional, uniform coloring of his historical pictures, the historical tone. Almost always the flesh looks like wood, the dress like metal, blue robes like steel. His drawings, however, are to be admired without criticism. Ingres lived in his youth, at Rome, as a drawer of portraits. For eight scudi he did the bust, for twelve the whole figure, raging inwardly the while at being kept from "great art" by such journeyman-work.

In these pieces an artistic eye which was now inexorable, now tender and full of fancy, has looked on nature, and, in flowing pencil-strokes, has caught with spirit and with the certain touch of direct feeling the real fulness of life in what he saw. These drawings show that "Father Ingres" possessed not only a highly cultivated intelligence and iron strength of will, not only the genius of industry, but also a heart, a genuine, warm, and fine-feeling heart; that he was in his innermost being by no means the cold academician, the stiff doctrinaire, which he appears to be in his large pictures, and which his opposition to the romantic school made of him. Here we have a charmer such as the Primitives were, a charmer such as the Impressionists are, like Massys and Manet, like Dürer and Degas, like all who have looked nature in the face. And while these drawings, at once occasional and austere, place him as a draftsman on a level with the greatest masters in the history of art, they also show him, the reactionary, as at the same time a man of progress, as the connecting link between the great art of the first half and the familiar art which rules over the second half of the nineteenth century.