(b Montauban, 29 Aug. 1780; d Paris, 14 Jan. 1867). French painter, the son of a minor painter and sculptor, Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres (1755–1814). After early training in the Toulouse Academy he moved to Paris in 1797 to study in Jacques-Louis David's studio. He won the Prix de Rome in 1801, but because of the unsettled political situation in France his departure for Italy was postponed until 1806. In the interval he produced his first portraits. These fall into two categories: portraits of himself and his friends, often Romantic in spirit (Self-Portrait, 1804, Mus. Condé, Chantilly); and portraits of well-to-do clients characterized by purity of line and enamel-like colouring (Mlle Rivière, 1805, Louvre, Paris). Their expressive contours have a sensuous beauty of their own beyond their function to contain and delineate form, and this was characteristic of Ingres's painting throughout his life.

Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)


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