Since the height of his career in the mid 1800s - and even by most modern critics of our own age - Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres has been widely regarded as one France’s greatest ever artists.
A master draughtsman and painter, with a deep passionate for the lineal continuation of academic art . . . he remains probably the closest man in all of history to matching the sheer graceful beauty of Raphael in his prime.
But, remarkably, it wasn’t always this way for the great man.
Though he had won a number of prestigious art prizes during his early life - and studied for four years in the studio of another titan of French art, Jacques Louis David - by his early twenties, Ingres found himself strangely at odds with his own generation.
In a time when Romantic ideals were taking the art world by storm - classicism was, for the first time, starting to be be seen as somewhat archaic.
And in submitting new work to the Paris Salon in 1806 (including the bombastic portrait of Napoleon seen below), Ingres’ work was received with a surprising hostility; not least from the famous critic Pierre Chaussard, who commented; “with so much talent, a line so flawless, and an attention to detail so thorough . . . how has M. Ingres succeeded in painting a bad picture!?”
Needless to say, the criticism really hit a nerve for the artist.
Recently relocated to Rome at the time, he vowed never to exhibit in Paris again - and furiously claimed to friends that the French art world was “full of scoundrels” (Though, in private, he also expressed a desire to one day “confound them all with my works” . . . and his deep conviction that “Art itself needs to be reformed, and I intend to be that revolutionary”)
Thus, for almost two decades, Ingres lived in a kind of self imposed exile from his homeland; choosing instead to seek patrons in Rome, Naples, and Florence, in order to follow in the footsteps of his Renaissance heroes.
It was not always a bountiful period for commissions. But, of the work he did produce in this time (both public and in private) we see Ingres rising to even more astonishing heights in his work. Yet still, for whatever reason, the critics in Paris remained unimpressed
One writer petulantly claimed the work above had no merit because her back was “three vertebrae too long”. While another said that Ingres had “aspired to the ancients . . . and completely lost his way”.
But in spite of it all - the artist relentlessly persisted. Driven by that same determination - and same anger - to prove the naysayers wrong;
And in 1824, just shy of his 42nd birthday, he finally met with the success his talent had deserved for so long.
With the renaissance inspired painting below - entitled The Vow of Louis XIII - Ingres suddenly went from relatively ostracized to widely celebrated almost overnight.
And, from here on, the man would be among the most in demand masters of his generation right until his death in 1867, at the age of 86.
No, he never quite established the full blown artistic revolution or academic art revival he had hoped for.
While Ingres was raising the bar for Neo Classicism - his great rival Eugene Delacroix became an equally distinguished master of the Romantic movement; and, for decades, the two men were engaged in the kind of rivalry which can perhaps only be compared to the days when Michelangelo Buonarroti was jousting for position with Leonard da Vinci in the Florentine Art world.
But, nonetheless, the impact Ingres still left on his generation - and the generations to come - is truly profound.
He remains arguably the most sublimely talented of all academic artists. A role model for Edgar Degas, the young Pablo Picasso, and countless other artists into the 20th century who have sought to learn from a legitimate master of his craft.
And, perhaps more so for his steadfast belief in his own artistic ideals - combined with the courage of conviction, and devotion to art as a means of pursuing ultimate beauty- I think we can all take a lot of inspiration from this incredible man.
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