Birth of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was born on 29 August 1780 in Montauban. A French painter from Montauban, Ingres was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David and became the leading champion of the Neoclassical tradition in the nineteenth century. He believed in the primacy of line and drawing over colour, and his portraits are admired for their precision and elegant surfaces. His best-known works include La Grande Odalisque, The Valpinçon Bather and The Turkish Bath, which show his taste for sensuous, slightly distorted figures. He spent many years in Italy, directing the French Academy in Rome, and he was a long-standing rival of Eugène Delacroix and the Romantics. His drawings and portraits influenced later artists such as Degas and Picasso.

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