Ingres, J.-A.-D.

J.-A.-D. Ingres, in full Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, (born August 29, 1780, Montauban, France—died January 14, 1867, Paris), painter and icon of cultural conservatism in 19th-century France. Ingres became the principal proponent of French Neoclassical painting after the death of his mentor, Jacques-Louis David. His cool, meticulously drawn works constituted the stylistic antithesis of the emotionalism and colourism of the contemporary Romantic school. As a monumental history painter, Ingres sought to perpetuate the Classical tradition of Raphael and Nicolas Poussin. The spatial and anatomical distortions that characterize his portraits and nudes, however, anticipate many of the most audacious formal experiments of 20th-century Modernism.