Jacques-Louis David and Ingres: Neoclassical Masters Compared

The Nineteenth Century Art Landscape

In Europe, the nineteenth century was an age of radical change during which the modern world took shape. In a world experiencing a population explosion of unparalleled magnitude, revolution followed revolution, a pattern punctuated by counter-revolution and conservative reaction. In thought as well as in science, the nineteenth century was an era of grand new theories through which visionary thinkers attempted to unify whole bodies of knowledge into precise, well-ordered systems. This was also the era in which the modern nation-state and accompanying ideas of nationalism were born. European governments extended their rule to every part of the globe, spreading the influence of European culture into colonies in Africa, the Americas, India, Asia, and Australia, while allowing influences from those areas to flow back to Europe. The formation of empires abroad was supported by the enthusiasm of popular nationalism at home, and patriotism and imperialism went hand in hand.

Artists in the nineteenth century were confronted with new innovations, and their individual artistic styles and works changed with the times. These artists found themselves using the elements of line, shape, and color to represent their private world — the realm of imagination and feeling. The functions of the artist and of the artist's medium were decisively transformed by the modern world. Three specific innovations fatefully affected their craft: the camera, the mass-produced print, and the printed reproduction. The collective techniques of an industrial age forced nineteenth-century artists to analyze their function and to study closely the physical nature of their medium. For the arts more broadly, this era produced a wide variety of philosophies rationalizing change and the reactions to change, meaning a continuing debate over the relative values of the "traditional" and the "modern" — a debate restimulated as each new style was itself rapidly superseded by yet a newer one.

The goal of self-determination that Napoleon imported to Holland, Italy, Germany, and Austria affected not only nations but also individuals. Heightened sensibility and intensified feeling became characteristic of the visual arts as well as the musical arts. This tendency toward images of impassioned or poignant feeling cut across all national boundaries. Feeling became both the subject and object of art. By the mid-nineteenth century, much of Europe had become industrialized, and the generation of artists who had inaugurated the Romantic Movement were dead. In their emphasis on individual genius and subjective experience, the arts of the Romantic era handed future generations the basis for their own development.

Neoclassicism and Romanticism

The nineteenth century marked the Neoclassical art movement, a severe, unemotional form of art that traced back to the style of ancient Greece and Rome. It was a combination of aesthetic attitudes and principles based on the culture, art, and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, characterized by an emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, and restrained emotion. Its rigidity was a reaction to the overbred Rococo style and the emotional Baroque style. Baroque art had itself emerged in Europe around 1600 as a reaction against the intricate and formulaic Mannerist style that dominated the late Renaissance. Baroque art is less complex, more realistic, and more emotionally affecting than Mannerism; it was encouraged by the Catholic Church — the most important patron of the arts at that time — as a return to tradition and spirituality.

Around 1800, Romanticism emerged as a reaction to Neoclassicism. It did not so much replace the Neoclassical style as act as a counterbalancing influence, and many artists were affected by both styles to some degree. Romanticism might best be described as a reaction against Neoclassicism — a deeply felt style that is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and emotionally wrought. Although Romanticism and Neoclassicism were philosophically opposed, they were the dominant European styles for generations, and many artists were shaped, to a greater or lesser degree, by both.

David and Ingres: Contrasting Styles in Napoleon Portraits

Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Dominique Ingres have both been regarded as masters of Neoclassical painting in the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. David specialized in history painting, while Ingres, who studied under him, specialized in portraits and orientalism. Although at one time they worked together, they eventually disagreed on matters of style and parted ways. Ingres adopted a manner based on what he believed to be a truer and purer Greek style than that employed by David. This divergence can be seen clearly in a comparison of Ingres' Portrait of Napoleon on his Imperial Throne with David's Napoleon in his Study. Ingres adopted flatter and more linear forms, placing the figure prominently in the foreground. In David's Napoleon in his Study, the figure is not placed in the foreground but is nevertheless brought up front through compositional means.

The value Ingres placed on the flow of the contour is a characteristic of his style throughout his career. His Portrait of Napoleon on his Imperial Throne exemplifies his approach of polished surfaces and simple, rounded volumes controlled by rhythmically flowing contours. The smoothness of the planes of the body is complemented by the broken, busy shapes of the drapery. Even the floor below the figure follows a simple, rounded volume with a few broken lines representing a bird's wings. Unlike David's treatment, even the chair in which Napoleon sits has a curved or rounded back. In David's work, there are no rounded contours or seemingly polished surfaces. Ingres' work appears smooth and polished, while David's is more severe and carries a rather rough, unpolished tone.

David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps at the Saint Bernard Pass appears unpolished and portrays a victorious stance. His Coronation of Napoleon in the Cathedral of Notre Dame similarly portrays a stoic position. David was appointed First Painter to the Emperor and was commissioned to produce a large painting commemorating the coronation. The Coronation of Napoleon in the Cathedral of Notre Dame is the piece that differs slightly from the other two David works: the linear contours do not seem as harsh, and the clothing comes closest to the broken, busy shapes of the drapery found in Ingres' Portrait of Napoleon on his Imperial Throne. The horizontal and vertical lines of the background wall appear very close to the viewer, giving it a flat appearance similar to the linearity and flatness of Ingres' portrait.

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