Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Odalisque and Slave, 1839. Graphite, black and white chalk, gray and brown wash. Signed, inscribed, and dated at lower left, J. Ingres / Rom. 1839. Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum. Photo: Graham Haber, 2011. "Click on" to enlarge.
NEW YORK, N.Y.-
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres(1780–1867) is among an elite group of nineteenth-century French masters whosestyle is almost instantly recognizable. Arguably the greatest portraitist of histime, Ingres was a brilliant draftsman, and his drawings have long been prizedalong with his paintings. TheMorgan Library & Museum presents sixteen superb drawings and threeletters by Ingres from its collection, together with one exceptional loan, in afocused exhibition in the Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery. Running through November 27the show spans Ingres’s career and provides visitors with an intimate look at adraftsman who is indisputably one of the greatest in French history.
Ingres’s Neoclassicism has often been framed in oppositionto the Romanticism of Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault, as well as otherartists associated with France’s Revolutionary Era. This view tends to obscurea freshness and originality that Ingres shared with his contemporaries. Happilyfor visitors to the Morgan, the Ingres exhibition will run concurrently withDavid, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France:
Drawings from the Louvre, whichfeatures a further ten sheets by the artist among the more than seventydrawings from the Louvre chronicling the period book-ended by the Revolution of1789 and the establishment of the Second Empire in 1852—largely encompassingthe years of Ingres’s career.
"The Morgan is delighted to present this exceptionalgroup of drawings by an artist whose influence was widespread in his day andcontinued into the twentieth century,” said William M. Griswold director of TheMorgan Library & Museum. “Ingres was famous for his devotion to a classicalstyle, yet a number of modern artists, such as Matisse and Picasso, wereprofoundly indebted to him. We are especially pleased to present thisexhibition in the context of the larger show of drawings from the Louvre,allowing visitors to see Ingres in the broad sweep of his time.”
The show will chronicle the major phases of the artist’scareer, beginning with Portrait of a Boy of ca. 1793–4, which he executed when hewas a thirteen or fourteen-year-old student at the Académie Royale in Toulouse.When Ingres entered the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David in 1797, heabandoned the fine modeling of graphite and sensitivity to minute detail thatcharacterize this early drawing. Also on view is a preparatory drawing forOedipus and the Sphinx of 1808, which dates from the period when the artist wasa pensionnaire at the Villa Medici in Rome. Like many of his fellow foreignartists in Rome, Ingres explored and sketched local monuments such as St.Peter’s, the Palazzo Barberini, and Santa Maria Maggiore. An extraordinarycityscape, View of Santa Maria Maggiore of ca. 1813–14, was likely executed ina sketchbook that Ingres carried with him to a preferred vantage point on theEsquiline Hill. He precisely rendered the church facade, but merely outlinedthe baroque sculptures and the procession leading away from the entrance.
In the years following his studies, Ingres established animportant studio on Rome’s Via Gregoriana where he worked on imperialcommissions and painted and drew portraits of French occupation officials andtheir families. Portrait of Hippolyte Devillers of 1812 features the Directorof Probate and Estates who moved to Rome the previous year and sat for Ingreson at least three occasions. Pictured as a bachelor at the age of forty-seven,Devillers appears somewhat nervous and delicate, as if he has not quite gainedconfidence in his new office. One of the most iconic drawings to be included inthe exhibition is Ingres’s Portrait of Monsieur Guillaume Guillon Lethière of1815, which depicts the new Director of the French Academy in Rome in all hisconvivial pomposity. The delicate and naturalistic shading of Lethière’s roundface juxtaposed to the rapid and jagged lines of his collar clearly demonstratewhy Ingres is considered an unparalleled master of portraiture.
The Morgan Library & Museum is internationally renownedfor its extensive collection of literary and historical manuscripts, and theIngres exhibition includes not only drawings but also three revelatory lettersby the artist. In one poignant example, written to Marie-Anne-Julie Forestier,Ingres’s fiancée, the artist laments his intense homesickness during his firstdays in Rome. He writes, “I lie down from nine at night until six in themorning, I do not sleep, I roll around in my bed, I cry, I think continuouslyof you . . .” Nine months later, Ingres would break his engagement, blaming hisunwillingness to return to Paris after the negative reviews his paintings hadreceived at the Salon.
Ingres once told a pupil that if he placed a sign above hisstudio door, it would read Ecole de Dessin (School of Drawing). The centerpieceof the exhibition is the large-scale graphite and black chalk Odalisque andSlave of 1839, which likely served as the model for the engraved version of thesubject. The epitome of exoticism and orientalism, this exquisite drawing isemblematic of the erotic tales of Arabia that had captured the imagination ofnineteenth-century Paris.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Guillaume Guillon Lethière (1760-1832), 1815. Graphite. Inscribed at lower right, M. de Ingres / a Madlle Lescot. Bequest of Therese Kuhn Straus in memory of her husband, Herbert N. Straus. Photo: Graham Haber, 2011
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