Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Drawing is the probity of art.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art, influencing Picasso, Matisse and other modernists.
Quotes
[edit]- Le dessin est la probitè de l’art.
- Drawing is the probity of art. To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours; drawing does not consist merely of line: drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane, modeling. See what remains after that. Drawing includes three and a half quarters of the content of painting. If I were asked to put up a sign over my door, I should inscribe it: School for Drawing, and I am sure that I should bring forth painters.
- «Du dessin», in Pensèes d’Ingres (Paris: Sirène, 1922), p. 70; translated by Walter Peach, Ingres (New York: Harper & Bros., 1939), p. 170
