Drawing was the strongest point of Ingres' genius, and in it the most diverse qualities are manifested: sometimes it is exquisitely delicate and naïve, sometimes keen and incisive, as in his sketches which are incomparable in what might be called their flavor; sometimes bold, magistral, and striking, sometimes violent and fierce, sometimes suave, tender, and voluptuous.
Color and chiaroscuro were his vulnerable points. His pictures often lack atmosphere, depth, and picturesque quality. The tendency, however, to impart a gray tone to his canvas, the monotony of his palette, was not a mistake of which he was guilty throughout his career. If he did not possess that orchestration of color which was the supreme gift of Eugène Delacroix, he nevertheless shows some charming subtleties and happy variations in his local tones.
Finally, as regards Ingres' touch, it is supple and light, delicate without being thin, expressive and unlabored in his painting of the nude, and exceedingly skilful in the rendering of accessories and of all that calls for elegance in execution. His portraits, notably those of women, are striking proofs of this.
Ingres will live forever because he frequently approaches Raphael in the beauty of his drawing, because, if inferior to Poussin in expression through ordonnance, he is sometimes his superior in expression through gesture, as also in his search for and attainment of beauty. And he will live because he has rivaled Holbein in portraiture, surpassed David in style, equaled Prud'hon in grace, and created certain forms which in their grandeur seem to be descended from the frescos of Michelangelo. Yes, whatever may be the inconstancy of fame, whatever may be the ideas which are to govern future generations, it may be affirmed that Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres will never be deposed from the place which he won by a hard struggle, by the force of his genius--a place that is not only on a plane with the painters who have given luster to the French school, but near those who have been the glory of the Renaissance.--ABRIDGED FROM THE FRENCH
HENRY LAPAUZE 'MÉLANGES SUR L'ART FRANÇAIS'
The term "realist," as applied to Ingres, requires explanation, for since his day times have changed, and we now rank him among the idealists, or, to speak more correctly, among the classicists. Certain Philistines would even go so far as to accuse him of being bound down to a formula; that is to say, of being conventional in his manner of painting, although this was the very thing against which he rebelled so vehemently in David.