Louvre Celebrates Painter Ingres's Bourgeois Matron, Nymphs

Bloomberg

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres knew how to flatter his sitters. The French painter miraculously transformed stocky, vulgar characters into elegant noblemen, and mature matrons into sensuous beauties.

The Louvre has assembled 79 paintings and 101 drawings by Ingres (1780-1867), including many of those nip 'n' tuck portraits, for a retrospective. It's a knockout.

Not everyone is a fan. Many regard Ingres as the father of academism, the epitome of vacuous virtuosity. More than a few works in the show confirm that image. The mythological, religious and historical works, the latter mostly on medieval and Renaissance themes, border on self-parody or kitsch.

Yet even his detractors don't deny that Ingres was a supreme draftsman and a fabulous portraitist. Fortunately, the greater part of the show is devoted to his strong points.

Ingres spent 24 years of his life in Italy, first as winner of the Prix de Rome scholarship, then staying on and earning his living by doing pencil portraits of French expatriates, and finally as director of the institution that had admitted him as a student, the Villa Medicis.

Under Mediterranean skies, he discovered Greek art and what he thought were the eternal laws of beauty. ``I'm a Greek,'' he used to say.

`Great Things'

When Ingres came back to Paris, in 1841, he discovered most of his clients were not interested in classical heroes. They wanted portraits, which he hated painting because ``they prevent me from doing great things.'' He yearned for public commissions, not works that disappeared in private homes.

Yet he painted them all -- aristocrats, politicians, foreign diplomats, clerics and the members of a bourgeoisie that had internalized the battle cry of the July Monarchy: ``Enrichissez- vous!'' (Get rich!)

He had an uncanny ability to reproduce sumptuous gowns and expensive furnishings in the minutest detail. For historians of dress and interior decoration his paintings are gold mines.

Bathing Beauties

Personally, Ingres preferred his ladies undressed. Some of his most celebrated canvases depict nymphs, bathers and odalisques. As an octogenarian, he worked four years on a ``Turkish Bath'' with 25 naked women, including his two wives.

They are all here, the dressed and the undressed.

Visitors to the last major Ingres show at London's National Gallery, in 1999, could buy a doll of Madame Moitessier, one of his sitters, ``in full costume which can be undressed down to her underwear.''

The souvenir shop of the Louvre offers nothing of the kind, though it does have all the ingredients you need in a Turkish bath. Ethnologists can draw their conclusions.

Ingres was also a talented fiddler. The original ``violon d'Ingres,'' now the French term for ``hobby,'' is on view, though it's not for sale.

The exhibition, which runs through May 15, is sponsored by Assurances Generales de France SA.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Jorg von Uthmann at uthmann@wanadoo.fr.

Last Updated: February 28, 2006 20:34 EST