Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/85

 INGRES 75 1809 that the state of public affairs admitted of the re- establishment of the Academy of France at Rome, and we find from the journals of the day that they produced a dis turbing impression on the public. It was clear that the artist was some one who must be counted with ; his talent, the purity of his line, and his power of literal rendering were generally acknowledged ; but he was reproached with a desire to be singular and extraordinary. &quot; Ingres,&quot; writes Frau v. Hastier (Lelen imd Kunst in Paris, 1806) &quot;wird nach Italien gehen, und dort wird er vielleicht vergessen dass er zu etwas Grossem geboreu ist, und wird eben darum eiu hohss Ziel erreichen.&quot; In this spirit, also, Chaussard violently attacked his Portrait of the Emperor (Pausanias Franc s ais, 1806), nor did the portraits of the Riviere family escape. The points on which Chaussard justly lays stress are the strange discordances of colour, such as the blue of the cushion against which Mme. Riviere- leans, and the want of the relief and warmth of life, but he omits to touch on that grasp of his subject as a whole, shown in the portraits of both husband and wife, which already evidences the strength and sincerity of the passionless point of view which marks all Ingres s best productions. The very year after his arrival in Rome (1808) Ingres produced (Edipus and the Sphinx (Louvre ; lithographed by Sudre, engraved by Gaillard), a work which proved him in the full possession of his mature powers, and began the Venus Anadyomene (Collection Rieset ; engraving begun by Pollet), completed forty years later, and exhibited in 1855. These works were followed by some of his best portraits, that of SI. Bochet (Louvre), and that of Mme. la Comtesse do Tournon, mother of the prefect of the department of the Tiber ; in 1811 he finished Jupiter and Thetis, an immense canvas now in the Musee of Aix; in 1812 Romulus and Acron (Ecole des Beaux Arts), and Virgil reading the jEneid a composition very different from the version of it which has become widely popular through the engraving executed by Pradier in 1832. The original work, executed for a bed chamber in the Villa Aldobrandini-Miollis, contained neither the figures of Maecenas and Agrippa nor the statue of Marcellus ; and Ingres, who had obtained possession of it during his second stay in Rome, intended to complete it with the additions made for engraving. But he never got beyond the stage of preparation, and the picture left by him, together with various other studies and sketches, to the Musee of his native town, remains half destroyed by the process meant for its regeneration. The Virgil was followed by the Betrothal of Raphael, a small painting, now lost, executed for Queen Caroline of Naples ; Don Pedro of Toledo Kissing the Sword of Henry IV. (Collection Deyniie&quot;; Montauban), exhibited at the Salon of 1814, together with the Chapelle Sistine (Collection Legentil ; lithographed by Sudre), and the Grande Odalisque (Collection Seilliere; lithographed by Sudre). In 1815 Ingres executed Raphael and the Fornarina (Collection Mme. N. cle Rothschild; engraved by Pradier); in 1816 Aretin and the Envoy of Charles V. (Collection Schroth), and Aretin and Tintoret (Collection Schroth) ; in 1817 the Death of Leonardo (engraved by Richomme) and Henry IV. Playing with his Children (engraved by Richomme), both of which works were commissions from M. le Comte de Blacas, then ambassador of France at the Vatican. Roger and Angelique (Louvre; lithographed by Sudre), and Francesca di Rimini (Muse&quot;e of Angers ; lithographed byAubry Lecomte), were completed in 1819, and followed in 1820 by Christ giving the Keys to Peter (Louvre). In 1815, also, Ingres had made many projects for treating a subject from the life of the celebrated duke of Alva, a com mission from the family, but a loathing for &quot; cet horrible liomme &quot; grew upon him, and finally he abandoned the task and entered in his diary &quot; J etais forc par la ne cessite de peindre un pareil tableau ; Dieu a voulu qu il restat eu e bauche.&quot; During all these years Ingres s reputation in France did not increase. The interest which his Chapelle Sistine had aroused at the Salon of 1814 soon died away; not only was the public indifferent, but amongst his brother artists Ingres found scant recognition. The strict classicists looked upon him as a renegade, and strangely enough Delacroix and other pupils of Guerin the very leaders of that romantic movement for which Ingres, throughout his long life, always expressed the deepest abhorrence alone seem to have been sensible of his -.merits. The weight of poverty too was hard to bear. In 1813 Ingres had married; his marriage had been arranged for him with a young woman who came in a business-like way from Montauban, on the strength of the representations of her friends in Rome to whom the painter was well known, Mme. Ingres speedily acquired a faith in her husband which enabled her to combat with heroic courage and patience the difficulties which beset their common existence,, and which were increased by their removal to Florence. There Bartolini, an old friend, had hoped that Ingres might have materially bettered his position, and that he might have aroused the Florentine school a weak offshoot from that of David to a sense of its own shortcomings. These expectations were disappointed. The good offices of Bartolini, and of one or two persons who felt a friendly interest in the painter, could only alleviate the miseries of this stay in a town where Ingres was all but wholly deprived of the means of at least gaining daily bread by the making of those small portraits for the execution o{ which, in Rome, his pencil had been constantly in request. Before his departure he had, however, been commissioned to paint for M. de Pastoret the Entry of Charles V. into Paris, and M. de Pastoret now obtained an order for Ingres from the Administration of Fine Arts ; he was directed to treat the Vceu de Louis XIII. for the cathedral of Mon tauban. This work, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1824, met with universal approbation: even those sworn to observe the unadulterated precepts of David found only admiration for the Vceu de Louis XIII. On his return Ingres was received at Montauban with enthusiastic homage, and found himself celebrated throughout France. In the following year (1825) he was elected to the Institute, and his fame was further extended in 1826 by the publication of Sudre s lithograph of the Grande Odalisque, which, having been scorned by artists and critics alike in 1819, now became widely popular, A second commission from the Government called forth the Apotheosis of Homer, which, replaced by a copy in tho decoration of the ceiling for which it was designed, now hangs in the galleries of the second story of the Louvre. From this date up till 1834 the studio of Ingres was thronged, as once had been thronged the studio of David, and he was a recognized chef d ecole. Whilst he taught with despotic authority, and admirable wisdom, he steadily worked; and when in 1834 he produced his great canvas of the Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien (cathedral of Autun ; lithographed by Trichot-Garneri), it was with angry disgust and resentment that he found his work received with the same doubt and indifference, if not the same hostility, as had met his earlier ventures. The suffrages of his pupils, and of one or two men like Decamps of undoubted ability, could not soften the sense of injury. Ingres resolved to work no longer for the public, and gladly availed himself ^of the opportunity to return to Rome, as director of the Ecole de France, in the room of Horace Vernet. There he executed La Vierge a 1 Hostie (Imperial collections, St Petersburg), Stratonice (Due d Aumale), Portrait of Cherubini (Louvre), and the Petite Odalisque for M. Marcotte, the faithful admirer for whom, in 1814, Ingres had painted the Chapelle Sistine.