Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
To find the equal of these faces after having stated their classic descent one would have to turn to the beautiful things by Ingres, and certainly Degas is, with Ingres, the most learned, the most perfect French draughtsman of the nineteenth century. An affirmation of this nature is made to surprise those who judge Impressionism with preconceived ideas.
This occurred about forty-five years ago; since then we have signally changed all that! Delacroix, who was an enthusiast in color, was the leader of one school of his time, and was opposed by Ingres, who was so wanting in this regard that he was accused of being color-blind. Mme. Thurwanger had a curious experience with these artists.
Examples of some of the greatest masters are here: Velasquez, Rembrandt, Rubens, Claude Lorraine, the Caracci, Bordone, Reynolds, lastly among moderns, Ingres and Hippolyte Flandrin. Much might be said about these pictures, if space permitted, but they alone are worth making the journey from Paris or Couilly to see.
Ingrès, Delacroix, Scheffer, Paul Delaroche, and other future celebrities, such as Couture, Gerome, etc., had been employed by the opulent and intelligent creator of this palace.
Raphael was a great designer, but there are a purity and a passion in Ingres' line for the like of which we have to go back to the Greeks.
This sketch of a woman who was admirably natural gives only a faint idea of her. It would need the pencil of an Ingres to render the pride of that brow, with its wealth of hair, the dignity of that glance, and the thoughts betrayed by the changing colors of her cheeks.
Then the Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot Troyon, and Troyon begot Millet, Courbet, Corot, and Rousseau, and these in turn begot Degas, Pissarro, Madame Morizot, and Guillaumin. Degas is a pupil of Ingres, but he applies the marvellous acuteness of drawing he learned from his master to delineating the humblest aspects of modern life.
But when Ingres attributes the excellence of Poussin to the fact that he was a faithful disciple of the ancients we feel that he is talking about the thing that matters, and that he is talking sense. We are deeply interested in our own states of mind: we are all psychologists now.
Later, the Wagnerians wanted to oust Meyerbeer from the stage and make a place for themselves, and they got credit for some of Schumann's harsh criticisms, this, too, despite the fact that at the beginning of the skirmish Schumann and the Wagnerians got along about as well as Ingres and Delacroix and their schools. But they united against the common enemy and the French critics followed.
Beside it Duerer would seem crabbed and puzzle-headed; Holbein would seem angular and geometrical; Da Vinci would seem vague: and I hope that no critic by partial quotation will endeavour to prove me guilty of having said that Ingres was a greater artist than Da Vinci.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking