Chapter X: The Generation of 1830 (2)

Painting took the same course. In opposition to the young painters who had burst into the arena with their gay-coloured uniforms, their gilded helmets and waving banners, _Ingres_ came forth in the great tournament of Romanticism in the character of the Black Knight. An old gentleman, a man who in all his being belonged to the generation that was passing away, who was fifty years of age at the time of the Revolution of July, stations himself suddenly as the angel of the flaming sword, or, in the phrase of his opponents, as the gendarme of Classicism, at the gates of the Academy, barring them against every suspicious-looking person. And the young men, eccentric, eager for action as they were, who had recently fought with so much fury, had to retreat before him. Golden sunshine and glow of colour were once more tabooed, and their representative heroes, Veronese, Rubens, and Delacroix, regarded as flickering Will o' the Wisps, whom every aspiring beginner should avoid as serpents and firebrands. One day when Ingres was taking his pupils through the Louvre he said, on entering the Rubens gallery: "_Saluez, messieurs, mais ne regardez pas._" The acrimony of the strife was so great that it extended even to the personal relations of the rival chiefs, and Ingres was attacked by convulsive spasms whenever he heard the name of the painter of the "Massacre of Chios." When in 1855 he had had a separate room prepared for his own pictures in the Universal Exhibition of that year, and observed Delacroix in the distance, just before the opening ceremony, he asked the attendant: "Has not somebody been here?--there is a smell of brimstone." "Now the wolf is in the sheepfold" was his observation when Delacroix was elected to the Institute. He regarded him as the "hangman," as the Robespierre of painting. "I used to love that young man, but he has sold himself to the evil one" (Rubens), said he, in righteous indignation, to his pupils.

"This famous thing, the Beautiful," Delacroix had once written, "must be--every one says so--the final aim of art. But if it be the only aim, what then are we to make of men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and, in general, all the artistic natures of the North, who preferred other qualities belonging to their art? Is the sense of the beautiful that impression which is made upon us by a picture by Velasquez, an etching by Rembrandt, or a scene out of Shakespeare? Or again, is the beautiful revealed to us by the contemplation of the straight noses and correctly disposed draperies of Girodet, Gérard, and others of David's pupils? A satyr is beautiful, a faun is beautiful. The antique bust of Socrates is full of character, notwithstanding its flattened nose, swollen lips, and small eyes. In Paul Veronese's 'Marriage at Cana' I see men of various features and of every temperament, and I find them to be living beings, full of passion. Are they beautiful? Perhaps. But in any case there is no recipe by means of which one can attain to what is called the ideally beautiful. Style depends absolutely and solely upon the free and original expression of each master's peculiar qualities. Wherever a painter sets himself to follow a conventional mode of expression he will become affected and will lose his own peculiar impress; but where, on the contrary, he frankly abandons himself to the impulse of his own originality, he will ever, whether his name be Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rubens, or Rembrandt, be sure master of his soul and of his art."

As compared with the principles thus laid down, Ingres represents the revulsion towards that formalism which had borne sway over the greater part of the history of French art. "Painting is nothing more than drawing," said Poussin. "Had God intended to place colour at the same height as form," wrote Charles Blanc, "He would not have failed to furnish His masterpiece, Man, with all the hues of the humming-bird." Once more, instead of the glowing colour of the Romantic school, absorbing the form into itself, the firm stroke of the outline was set forth; instead of its pathos, breathing forth passionate emotion, men returned to study the chill tranquillity of stone. Once more dramatic composition and mastery over movement were held in abhorrence, as incompatible with that pursuit of plastic beauty which was the highest goal of art. The only point in question was, how to avoid the one-sidedness of Classicism. David, as a child of the Revolution, had naturally been limited to Ancient Rome; but now that the legitimate monarchy had been re-established there was no reason why one should not revere, not only pagan, but also Christian Rome, and in Raphael and Michael Angelo the maturest blossom of the latter. Thus the Classical school was enriched by Ingres with features of greater vivacity. He entered into a direct relationship with the great Italian masters, while David had none save with the rigid Roman antique. By him the Classical severity of David was relaxed, the refractory sharpness of the outlines relieved by a treatment of form which had the effect of making every figure appear to be worked in metal.

(_By permission of M. Jules Bapst, the owner of the picture._)]

Ingres was born in 1781, under the _Ancien Régime_. As a young man he lived through the triumphs of the Empire and the Classical school, and it was only natural that he should become David's pupil. In 1796 he entered his studio, and studied there with such assiduity that he never noticed what was taking place in that of Gros. When he went to Italy he studied there the masters whom his own teacher had arrogantly despised. He learned from the Cinquecento how to draw and model more accurately, more firmly, and at the same time with a more intimate grasp of the subject than was usual in the school of David. This innovation made him a progressive Classicist, and gave him, during the early years of the Restoration, almost the appearance of an assailant and revolutionary. Himself the incarnation of the academic spirit, he had to resign himself to see his first works rejected by the Salon, a fact which did not deter him from continuing to work obstinately at his easel. "_Je compte sur ma vieillesse; elle me vengea._" And this revenge was granted him in the fullest measure.

When one has seen the outward appearance of a man, one knows his character, his spirit, and his genius. Ingres' portrait of himself contains the analysis of his art. He was quite a small man, of a swarthy complexion, with features sharp and as if cast in bronze. His thick black hair stood up stubbornly on end, so that he had to grease it carefully every day. Under hair of this kind there is almost always an obstinate brain. The jaws projected, as is the case with men endowed with a strong will. The eyes were large and piercing, with that bold eagle-glance which fills parents with fond hopes, but does not touch the hearts of young women. When he appeared to be excited, it was only the excitement of work expressing itself in him. This little man, in his large cloak, seemed to say when he stood at his easel, pencil in hand: "I shall be a great painter, for I am determined to be one." He kept his word. Strength of will, hard work, study, obstinacy, patience--these are the elements of which Ingres' talent is compounded. "_Vouloir, c'est pouvoir_," was his motto. One would think Buffon had had him in mind in that passage in which he defines genius as patience. The trinity-in-unity of his qualities consisted of correctness, balance, exactness; qualities which go to make rather a great architect or mathematician than an interesting painter.

Ingres' range of subjects was unusually wide. Pictures on themes taken from antiquity ("Oedipus and the Sphinx" and "Virgil reading the Æneid"); costume pictures ("Henry IV and his Children" and the "Entry of Charles V into Paris"); religious paintings (Madonnas, "Christ giving the Keys to St. Peter," and "St. Symphorian"); nude female figures (the "Odalisque," the "Liberation of Angelica," and "The Source"); allegories ("The Apotheosis of Homer" and "The Apotheosis of Napoleon"); pictures of public functions ("Bonaparte as First Consul" and "Napoleon on the Throne"); and even a painting taken from the life ("Pius VII in the Sistine Chapel"), are included in the list. Yet, notwithstanding his astonishing diversity of themes, there is hardly an artist more one-sided in his principles. Ingres thought exclusively of purely plastic art: beauty of form and harmony of line alone attracted him; he was insensible to the charm of colour. His standpoint was the Institute of Rome; the Italian Cinquecento the exclusive object of his worship. He carried this study as far as plagiarism, and as director of the Roman Academy made free with the intellectual property of the Cinquecento masters, as if they had lived only on his account.

When Delacroix was painting the "Expulsion of Heliodorus" in Saint Sulpice, he put forth the whole strength of his creative genius to avoid all reminiscence of Raphael's fresco. Ingres' power of invention consisted in discovering, with a weird certainty, whether the subject of which he wished to treat had already been painted by an Italian or other Classical master. The picture "Jupiter and Thetis," of 1811, is put together after a design on a Greek vase, and represents in its studied archaism the Æginetan period of his art. The "Vow of Louis XIII," of 1824, was his confession of faith as regards the Cinquecento. The motive was taken from the Madonna di Foligno, the curtains from the Madonna di San Sisto, the floating angels from the Madonna del Baldacchino, and the candlesticks as well as the little angels with the inscribed tablet are from the same source. It is all beautiful, of course, for it is all Raphael; only, it would have been more rational if Ingres had lived in the time of Raphael instead of in the nineteenth century. One would take the picture to have been painted under Raphael's eyes, and it bears to his works the same relation as Raphael's earlier pictures do to Perugino's. The "Christ giving the Keys to St. Peter" is also put together out of elements derived from the school of Urbino. In his "St. Symphorian," which was belauded as the _ne plus ultra_ of style, he turned by way of variety to the imitation of Michael Angelo: the action is violent, the muscles swollen. The "Apotheosis of Homer" is an admirable lecture in archæology, a sitting of the great academy of genius, in which the poses are so fine and the heads so full of marble idealism that in comparison with it Raphael's "School of Athens" has the effect of the wildest naturalism.

INGRES. STUDY FOR THE ODALISQUE IN THE LOUVRE.]

Thus Father Ingres stands forth as a cold, stiff, academic painter, as a doctrinaire who has not progressed much further than the much-reviled David. He represents, as Th. Rousseau said, only to a moderate degree the good old art which we have lost. In the words of Diaz: "Let him be shut up with me in a tower, without engravings, and I wager that his canvas will remain untouched, whilst I shall succeed in producing a picture." He possessed an arid ability which leaves one cold in presence of even his most important works. How lifeless is the effect produced by his paintings of nude single figures, his "Odalisque" and his "Freeing of Andromeda," which brought him especial fame! Ingres could not paint flesh, and in this respect he is indicative of an enormous retrogression as compared with Prudhon. The striving after sculpturesque beauty, and, in connection therewith, the repression of all individuality, became in him almost a religion.

INGRES. THE SOURCE.]

One finds it difficult to-day to account for the fame which once belonged to his picture of "The Source," the nude figure of a standing girl pouring water out of an urn that rests on her left shoulder and is steadied by her right arm raised over her head. The picture undoubtedly exhibits qualities of draughtsmanship which in recent days Ingres alone possessed in so high a degree. But when, in pursuit of his Classical conception, he had eliminated every touch of nature, he proceeded to destroy the rest of the impression by the cold violet tones which are not only condemned by colourists, but which even Raphael would have considered false and ugly. Here, as in all his female figures, he attains to a certain grace, but it is an animal, expressionless grace. Skilful as he was in delineating the muscles of the human body, he was yet absolutely incapable of painting heads expressive of feeling or emotion. He depicted the form in itself, the abstract, typical, absolute form. He was dominated only by a love for the _beauté suprême_, so that when he was in presence of nature he could not refrain from purifying and generalising. Everywhere we see beautiful lines, bodies modelled with admirable skill, but we never enter into any closer relationship with his figures. They do not live our life or breathe our atmosphere; they have not our thoughts: they are foreign to all that is human. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Member of the Institute, Senator, etc., the stylist held in honour as a superior being, the high-priest of pure form and outline, will in all times command the esteem, and in some respects the admiration, of the student of the history of art; the enthusiasm, never.

INGRES. OEDIPUS AND THE SPHINX.]

INGRES. PAGANINI.]

And yet, notwithstanding all this, I am an enthusiastic admirer of Ingres. Indeed, it has happened to me, in the collection of engravings at the Louvre, to catch myself saying: "Ingres! great, beloved Master! I have much to ask your pardon; for you were one of the greatest and most refined spirits to whom the century has given birth." For I doubt whether any one down to the present time has rightly understood the mysterious figure of Ingres, the man who in his youth was enraptured by "_l'esprit, la grâce, l'originalité de Vataux et la délicieuse couleur de ses tableaux_," and who, at a later time, not because of failing powers but deliberately and of set purpose, adopted a calmer system of colour tones; of this Classicist _par excellence_, who is counted among the greatest artists, in the familiar and graceful style, in the history of art.

Ingres is one of the rare masters whom even their opponents are forced to admire. In the stern, sculpturesque modelling of his naked figures he displays remarkable power. His painting, also, has a curiously intimate appeal, due to its cool, metallic harmonies of colour--light blue, rose, and pale yellow in particular.

But above all Ingres commands attention by his portraits. From his first residence at Rome, that is, from the beginning of the century, he painted portraits which imprint themselves on the memory like medals struck in metallic sharpness in the style of Mantegna. Here too he is unequal, at times cold and commonplace, but usually 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 ensure 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.

So far back as 1806 there appeared in the Salon his likeness of Napoleon I, with his bloodless, corpse-like face, enchased with such art that Delécluze called it a Gothic medal. The Emperor is seated like a wax figure upon the throne, surrounded by the attributes of majesty--stiff, motionless as a Byzantine idol. It was followed in 1807 by the portrait of Mme. Devauçay, which even to-day impresses the beholder most pleasingly, notwithstanding the pedantic style in which it is painted. One feels in it fire and youthfulness, the enthusiasm and ardour of a new convert, who has for the first time discovered in nature beauties other than those he had learnt to see in the Academy. Moreover, he possessed a very distinguished and personal taste in drawing. The face is of exquisite grace, the eyes tenderly seductive and delicately veiled. Ingres is already announced as he was afterwards to be.

INGRES. MLLE. DE MONTGOLFIER.]

In Holbein's portraits the whole German community of his time has been handed down to us; in Van Dyck's, 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 colourist. The same spirit animated this splendid _bourgeois_ of art. His "Bertin the Elder" is justly his most celebrated, enduring work; not the mere painted petrifaction of a newspaper potentate, but one of those portraits which bring a whole epoch home to the mind. It tells of the triumph of the _bourgeoisie_ under the Monarchy of July more fully and clearly than does Louis Blanc's _Histoire de Dix Ans_. In the best of humours, with the four-square solidity of a knowledge of his own worth, which is full of character, this modern newspaper demi-god sits on his chair as on a throne, the throne of the _Journal des Débats_, like a _bourgeois_ Jupiter Tonans, with his hands on his knees.

INGRES. THE FORESTIER FAMILY.]

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 hard colouring is still, at times, offensive. Almost always the flesh looks like wood, the dress like metal, blue robes like steel. His drawings, from which this defect is absent, 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 journey-work. There is a story told of him, that when one day an Englishman knocked at his door and asked, "Does the draughtsman who makes the small portraits live here?" he shut the door in his face, with the words: "No; he who lives here is a painter." To-day these small masterpieces of which he was ashamed sell for their weight in gold. In the Paris Exhibition of 1889 there was Mme. Chauvin with her Chinese eyes; Mme. Besnard on the terrace of the Pincio with her broad hat and her elegant sunshade; Mrs. Henting with her innocent smile of an "_honnête femme_"; Mrs. Cavendish, an affected young blonde, with her overladen travelling dress and her crazy coiffure. Strange, that a man like Ingres should rave so about new fashions and pretty toilettes!

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, especially the portrait of Paganini and "The Forestier Family," show that Father Ingres possessed not only a highly cultivated intelligence and an 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 he appears in his large pictures, and which he became by his opposition to the Romantic school. Here we have an enchanter such as the Primitives were and 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 draughtsman on a level with the greatest masters in the history of art, they also show him, the reactionary, to be at the same time a man of progress, 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.