Part 3

The picture of “Joan of Arc assisting at the Consecration of Charles VII. in the Cathedral of Reims” was painted for the gallery of Versailles, but is now in the Louvre. It is signed “J. Ingres, 1854.” The figure, the maid’s squire, standing immediately behind the kneeling priest, is said to be a portrait of the artist himself.]

Soon after the portrait of the Duke of Orleans was finished he received another royal commission, the “Jesus among the Doctors,” which the Queen Marie-Amélie wished to present to the Château de Bizy. The work, badly conceived at the beginning, was still unfinished when the Revolution drove from France the patroness who had commissioned it. It remained almost forgotten in a corner of the artist’s studio till 1862, when Ingres decided to finish it and present it to the museum of his natal city. Of all Ingres’ productions, it is perhaps the only one where the inspiration and execution both seem feeble.

While he had been still in Rome, in 1839, Ingres had received from the Duc de Luynes a commission to decorate the great room at the Château of Dampierre with two large mural paintings representing “The Age of Gold” and “The Age of Iron.” He was delighted with the commission, as he was always dreaming of reviving the great traditions of decorative painting. He made numberless studies for these subjects, many of them among the most beautiful of his drawings. But as the painting had to be done actually on the walls at Dampierre, the work progressed very slowly. Years flew by, and the artist’s enthusiasm cooled. The noble Duke and the sensitive and proud painter could not get along well under the same roof. Ingres thought himself slighted on one occasion (in 1850) and brusquely threw up the commission, leaving his work unfinished. There exists of this gigantic work only a sketch at Dampierre, an infinite number of drawings at the Museum of Montauban, and a little painting executed from these drawings in 1862, a very feeble representation of what the definitive work would have been. As for “The Age of Iron,” we have only the preliminary studies.

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As if to revenge himself for the loss of his promised masterpiece, Ingres now took up again a number of the works he had sketched in his youth and set himself to finish them or repaint them. He also busied himself painting replicas of others which had passed out of his hands but with which he was not entirely satisfied. He painted thus a repetition of the “Apotheosis of Homer,” adding a number of fresh figures and substituting others for some of the poets and artists of his first choice. After much anxious reflection and discussion with his pupils, he decided to banish Shakespeare, as he had already banished Goethe, from the group of the immortals. He also painted replicas of his “Sistine Chapel,” of “Roger delivering Angelica,” and variations of his “Œdipus” and “Stratonice.” He also painted four or five slightly different versions of the figure of the Virgin in his early picture of the “Vow of Louis XIII.” One of these developed into a picture of “The Virgin between St. Nicholas and St. Alexander”--a subject the Emperor of Russia had asked him to treat. We find another version of the same type in “The Virgin with the Host,” which forms one of our illustrations. In no other work of Ingres is his passionate admiration of Raphael more clearly displayed.

One of the new works which caused the liveliest sensation was “The Birth of Venus” or “Venus Anadyomene.” This had been begun forty years before, at the time of the early “Bathers” and “Odalisque.” The beautiful white body of the goddess detaches itself from the harmonious blue of the sea and sky, and groups of amorini flutter round and caress her youthful form. One of these delicious attendants offers her a mirror, another kisses the feet of the young goddess, while a third embraces her knees. It would be difficult to imagine anything more graciously tender or more natural than the infantile figures.

The “Venus Anadyomene” was finished in 1848; in 1851 Ingres painted his “Jupiter and Antiope,” and two years later he painted his “Apotheosis of Napoleon I.,” a large subject for the decoration of one of the ceilings of the Hôtel de Ville, at Paris. This was unfortunately destroyed by fire in the troubled days of the Commune in 1871. In 1854 his “Joan of Arc assisting at the Consecration of Charles VII.” was painted for the gallery of Versailles.

We have now reached the last years of the artist’s laborious life. They were as busy as his earlier years, but they were crowned with honour and glory. In 1855 all Europe flocked to Paris to see the Universal Exhibition. The life-work of Ingres was gathered together in a special gallery. It produced an immense impression. All criticisms of detail fell before the magnificent affirmation of the artist’s individual ideal. One of the grand medals was given to him by the unanimous votes of the artists, and the Emperor made him an officer of the Legion of Honour.

Then, in the following year, as if to crown his career by the evocation of a supreme masterpiece, Ingres finished the “Source,” a subject which had been begun at the same time as the “Venus Anadyomene.” This beautiful figure was not a passing vision which had animated the brush of the aged painter; it was indeed the daughter of his dreams, an emanation of his own soul, the slow growth of long meditations, and which, at last, incarnated itself in an immortal form. This calm and adorable figure seems a souvenir of our long-lost innocence. That is perhaps why we love it so, and why we bless the artist to whom we owe this divine dream.

Ingres died in 1867. He had finished his task, had spoken the last word of his austere but profoundly human genius.

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Ingres has been spoken of as an ancient Greek lost and bewildered in our modern times. Such a view of his character is misleading. Like all the great creators, he expressed the aspirations of his race and his times. He was not only the child of his century and his country, but he represented them both in their classic reaction and in their impulse towards Romanticism. But the two tendencies were so nicely balanced in his temperament that he offended the extremists of both parties. He paid in his lifetime for his detachment from parties, for his exalted aims and sublime courage, but he reaps his reward from posterity. The creator of the immortal figures of Œdipus, the Odalisque, Angelica, Stratonice, and the Source to-day takes unquestioned rank among the great masters not only of French but of European art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The authoritative French accounts of Ingres’ life and work (from which the foregoing sketch has been compiled) are:--

_Comte Henri Delaborde._--Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine (1870).

_Charles Blanc._--Ingres (1870).

_Henry Lapauze._--L’Œuvre de Ingres (in “Melanges sur l’Art Français,” 1905).

_Jules Momméja._--Ingres (“Les Grands Artistes” series).

_T. de Wyzewa._--L’Œuvre peint de Jean-Dominique Ingres (1907).

_Boyer d’Agen._--Ingres d’apres une Correspondence inédite (1909).

The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh