J.A.D. Ingres - The Non-Romantic Painter

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière - 1806 - Oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm - Musée du Louvre, Paris. The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1806. (click photo for larger image)French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique (J.A.D.) Ingres (1780-1867) was an icon of cultural conservatism in 19th-century France. He became the principal proponent of Neoclassical painting, following the death of his mentor, Jacques-Louis David. The cool, meticulously drawn works of Ingres were a complete antithesis of the emotionalism and colorism of the Romanticism that sought to challenge it. Many found the movement to be old-fashioned. However, the spatial and anatomical distortions embedded in Ingres’ portraits and nudes most definitely anticipate some of the boldest formal experiments that would be taken by 20th-century Modernists.