Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1780-1867/

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) had an unparalleled influence on 19th-century French painting. Ingres confronted the aesthetic challenges and conflicts of his time and reflected the historical and cultural upheavals of his era. In the course of his long life he succeeded in liberating himself from the aesthetic doctrines of the late 18th century, and thus achieved his own very individual concept of Neoclassicism. The conflicts between traditional academic theories and an increasingly dubious hierarchy of genres which attempted to force the artist into the antithetical roles of history painter and portraitist, create in his works a tension between the imitation of nature and free artistic form. The present volume traces Ingres' quest for an individual pictorial language and indicates the way from the artistic conflicts of the 19th century into the modern era. Ingres' work has been studied by 20th-century artists and continues to exert its influence up to the present day. Book jacket.