INGRES GEB - Tapa dura

A study of the life and work of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), the French artist whose illusionistic surfaces dominated much of 19th-century French painting. Based on the documentary material at the Musee Ingres, the text traces Ingres's life and work from his formative years in Rome. Georges Vigne analyzes the qualities that have stirred controversy over Ingres's paintings since his emergence as an artist in the first years of the 19th century, including Ingres's admiration of Raphael and early Italian painting, the remarkable nuances of line and bold colour combinations that earned him the designations such as "primitive", the arresting eroticism of his images, and the participation of his devoted studio in his work.

In this comprehensive, lavishly illustrated volume Georges Vigne examines Ingres's artistic life and brings together a staggering number of drawings, studies, and compositions. Guided by careful scrutiny of drawings and documents, Vigne reappraises deep-rooted assumptions and offers a wealth of candid insights on issues such as Ingres's faithful studio assistants, his official commissions that could weave in and out of political regimes, the legendary rivalries with Delacroix and the Romantics, and the curious motivation behind Ingres's seemingly endless line of copies and revisions of his earlier compositions. Finally, as an indispensable resource to scholars, this volume reproduces, with Vigne's methodical transcriptions and annotations, the valuable pages of the notebooks in which Ingres listed and referred to his paintings. This authoritative volume on Ingres is also the most complete monograph on any artist of his generation and a valuable chronicle of the man behind the last great studio in the classical tradition.