Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (* 29. August 1780 in Montauban; † 14. Januar 1867 in Paris) was a French neoclassical painter. Ingres was strongly influenced by earlier artistic traditions and strove to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the rising Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, his painted and drawn portraits are considered his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art and influenced Picasso, Matisse, and other modernists.
Born into a modest family in Montauban, he travelled to Paris to study in David's studio. In 1802, he made his Salon debut, winning the Prix de Rome for his painting "The Ambassadors of Agamemnon in the Tent of Achilles." By the time he left for his stay in Rome in 1806, his style - revealing his close study of the Italian and Flemish Renaissance masters - was fully developed and would change little for the rest of his life. While working in Rome and later Florence from 1806 to 1824, he regularly sent paintings to the Paris Salon, where they were objected by critics who found his style bizarre and archaic. During this period, he received few commissions for the historical paintings he wanted to paint, but was able to support himself and his wife as a portrait painter and draftsman.
He was finally recognized at the Salon in 1824, when his raphaelesque painting, The Vow of Louis XIII met with acclaim and Ingres was acknowledged as the leader of the neoclassical school in France. Although the income from commissions for historical paintings enabled him to paint fewer portraits, his Portrait of Monsieur Bertin marked his next popular success in 1833. The following year, his indignation at the harsh criticism of his ambitious composition The Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian caused him to return to Italy, where he assumed directorship of the French Academy in Rome in 1835. He became director of the academy in 1835. In 1841 he returned to Paris for good. In his later years he painted new versions of many of his earlier compositions, a series of designs for stained glass windows, several important portraits of women and The Turkish Bath, the last of his several Orientalist paintings of the female nude, which he completed at the age of 83.