Ingres

This new monograph explores the life and work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), one of the most important artists of the nineteenth-century Neoclassical period. In this insightful and unbiased survey, Andrew Shelton provides the readers with a comprehensive portrait of the seventy-year career of this most celebrated artist. He examines Ingres' position within the turbulent society of eighteenth and nineteenth-century France (during his lifetime Ingres witnessed the revolution of 1789, the coronation of Napoleon as Emperor, the restoration of the monarchy, the revolution of 1830 resulting in the July monarchy, the revolution that delivered the Second Republic in 1848 and the rise of the second empire under Napoleon III in 1852) and the effect the shifting balance of power had upon his patrons and their commissions.The text also fully explores the frequent criticisms levelled at Ingres' work during his lifetime and examines how the sometimes amorphous torsos and extended limbs of his figures reflect the artist's obsession with purity of form over explicit realism. Schooled by France's most celebrated classicist, Jacques-Louis David, Ingres won the coveted Prix de Rome at the age of only twenty-one.