INGRES, JEAN-DOMINIQUE-AUGUSTE, an eminent French painter, was born at Montauban in August 1781. By his father he was designed for a musician, but as he grew towards manhood his taste for painting became so decided that his father at length con sented to gratify his ardent longing, and after some preparatory instruction from a provincial painter, ho was placed in the atelier of David. Here his progress was very rapid, and he soon came to be regarded as one of the most promising of that artist's pupils. On leaving David, he spent fifteen years at Rome and four years at Florence, before he settled in Paris. He had from an early period abandoned David's manner, though it was then at its highest popularity, and adopted a freer and less formally academic one, though in the long conrso of years during which he has pursued his art his style has in its turn come to be regarded as too ranch characterised by classicism and an antiquated preciseness of manner. It is now con siderably more than half a century since M. Ingres obtained his first artistic success—winning in 1800 the second and in 1801 the first prize of the Acad4mie des Beaux Arts. He has ever since steadily prosecuted his profession, and though the veteran might long since have reposed on his laurels, he lsas never ceased to paint, and this present year (1856) he has completed a picture of 'The Birth of the Muses presided over by Jupiter,' which contains some fifteen figures, and is said to be elaborately finished. Of course it would be impos sible to give a list of even the more important productions of a painter so industrious as M. Ingres and of such long standing, and one to whose works an entire salon was appropriated at the great exposition of 1855; it may suffice therefore to say that several of his historical and classical paintings have been purchased by successive governments and now adorn the public museums of France; that be painted the ceiling of one of the apartments of the Louvre, the subject being the ' Apotheosis of Homer ;' that he has painted portraits of a large number of royal and distinguished Frenchmen from Napoleon I. (his
portrait of whom painted in 1808 is now in the Hotel des Invalides) downward ; and that he has made designs for the stained glass windows of some churches and chapels (particularly those of St. Ferdinand and Dreux) which are regarded by his countrymen as models in that department of art. A volume of 102 engravings by M. Revell from the principal paintings of Ingres, was published at Paris in 1851, and an examination of it will give a good general idea of his style.
M. Ingres after his return to Paris was made professor in the Ecole des Beaux Arta. In 1829 he was appointed to succeed Horace Vernet as director of the Academy at Rome, and his services as chief of that important institution have been highly eulogised, though, as was almost inevitable, they have not escaped severe adverse criticism ; indeed it has been the lot of M. Ingres to have to sustain more perse vering depreciation, as well as extravagant praise, than almost any of his eminent artistio contemporary countrymen. In 1834 M. Ingres was nominated Chevalier, and iu 1845 Commander of the Legion of Honour. He was elected Member of the Institute in 1825.