ingres chez les fauves

Ingres Chez Les Fauves1

Roger Benjamin

For Bob Boardingham, in memoriam

What's a nice Goy like you doing in a place like this?

It is stretching it a bit, but only a bit, to adapt a line from an old Tin Pan Alleyclassic in describing the presence of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres at the 1905Salon d'Automne. Ingres was no virgin in this den of aesthetic misfits, but he wasfor many French art lovers the model of aesthetic probity, of learned tradition, ofassiduity in execution. A Frenchman and a Catholic to his bootstraps, he wasuncrowned head of the French school in the nineteenth century. The painter AbelFaivre, moonlighting as a cartoonist for Le Figaro, imagined an encounter in theSalon between Ingres and Frantz Jourdain, prominent architect and president ofthe SocieÂ teÂ du Salon d'Automne (plate 46). When the florid, bow-tied impresarioof the modern asks the disgruntled, frock-coated bourgeois `What surprises youthe most here at the Salon d'Automne, Monsieur Ingres?', the answer was a gruff`Seeing myself here.'

Not that Frantz Jourdain needed to be Jewish to act as a counter to Ingres'sgoyishness. There was a sense in which the Salon d'Automne stood increasingly,as the new century advanced from the Dreyfus Affair towards xenophobia andwar, as a `Jewish' space, a showcase for foreigners, dubious French intellectualsand charlatans. It is not so much among the best-known painters of the Salond'Automne ± leaders of the Fauves and Neo-Impressionists, former Nabis andfuture Cubists ± that Jewish identity was explicitly present, as among itssupporters. These included major critics like Louis Vauxcelles (neÂ Mayer) andGustave Kahn, the powerful art administrator and critic Roger Marx, patrons ofthe avant garde like ThadeÂ e Natanson and Gertrude, Leo and Sarah Stein, and keyart dealers, whether it be the silver-tail Bernheim brothers, the German eÂ migreÂDaniel-Henry Kahnweiler, or that Montmartre mother-figure Berthe Weill.

I use the Jewish/Goyish figure not so much to commune with recentscholarship on the role of Jewish ethnicity in cultural debates of the day,2 nor tosuggest how nascent French anti-semitism might have entered discussions ofIngres, as to enrich metaphorically a bizarre cultural juxtaposition. Ingres was anode of purity in a melting pot of alterity. The effect was evident in the press,

Art History ISSN 0141-6790 Vol. 23 No. 5 December 2000 pp. 743±771

743ß Association of Art Historians 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers,108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

pinned down by a writer hostile to the new painting, who found it a `happy idea',`in the middle of this Salon of Battles where everything rubs shoulders, from theconscientious work of the researcher to the most carnavalesque imaginings, tosuddenly uncover the austere and so very pure work of the great Ingres'.3 Yet acrucial element transgressed this antinomy between austerity and carnival, as weshall see: eroticism, presented in a pictorial form more extreme than anything onoffer in contemporary art. In Ingres's Bain turc of 1862 (plate 47), centrepiece ofthe exhibition, the artist doffed his garb of goyish probity, took his place downamong the aesthetic misfits, and was claimed by them in turn.

The occasion was a pair of retrospective exhibitions held in honour of twovery unlike artists ± Ingres and Edouard Manet ± thrust together on the plane ofcontemporaneity. These retrospectives were the third set in a series mounted inthe first half-decade by the fledgling exhibiting SocieÂ teÂ du Salon d'Automne(founded in 1902, and opening its doors in 1903). The retrospectives quicklybecame a key attraction of the Salon d'Automne, no doubt to the satisfaction ofJourdain and co-organizers keen to establish the salon's distinctiveness in a highlycontested field of visual culture. Unlike the official Salons (where Ingres'ssupposed followers showed), they favoured progressive, indeed experimental art.So too did the older Salon des IndeÂ pendants, but unlike it, the Salon d'Automne

46 Abel Faivre, Par fil speÂ cial:Les mots historiques, cartoon inLe Figaro, 19 October 1905.

Les mots historiques

± `Qu'est-ce qui vous eÂ tonne le plus au Salon d'Automne,M. Ingres?'± `C'est de m'y voir . . .'

INGRES CHEZ LES FAUVES

744 ß Association of Art Historians 2000

valued the trappings of officialdom: it had a jury, a board of patrons, grades ofmembership, efficient organization and excellent publicity. Diversifying the artexhibition was a policy of the Society. In its first few years it added decorativearts, an exhibition of books, literary and musical sections, exhibitions of foreignschools, and the retrospectives of French artists.

From the outset the Salon d'Automne promoted apotheoses, in theretrospective mode made fashionable by the recent Expositions universelles.4 Inits inaugural exhibition, held under electric lamp-light in the new Petit Palais, asmall gathering of works paid homage to Paul Gauguin, who had just died. Overthe next five years there were twenty-three retrospectives, some of them very large(like the display of 227 Gauguins assembled by Charles Morice at the 1906 Salond'Automne). The weight of this exposure of historical painting complicates theusual image of avant-garde activity being concerned with innovation and futurity

47 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Le Bain turc, 1862. Oil on canvas. MuseÂ e du Louvre.Photo: ReÂ union des museÂ es nationaux.


ß Association of Art Historians 2000 745

rather than retrospection and the examination of tradition. The artists of theSalon d'Automne did want a tradition, but one of their own choosing, not thatimposed by their former teachers from the Institut, such as Jean-LeÂ on GeÂ roÃ me,Fernand Cormon or William Bouguereau, whose view of tradition ran rathernarrowly from Raphael and Michelangelo through Poussin to David and Ingres.The retrospectives construct an independent view of more recent art history,establishing as it were a canon for the avant garde, indicating what critics of theday called a `ligneÂ e', a `filiature'.5

Eclecticism was the hallmark of this canon, as Frantz Jourdain, presiding overthe series of retrospectives mooted by the artists, recognized: `These influencesgenerally seem to me extraordinarily multiple and often diametrically opposed,influences in which the neighbouring pairs are Ingres and Manet, Poussin andSisley . . . Tiepolo and CeÂ zanne, Delacroix and Puvis de Chavannes.' As a resultthere was, he said `no longer a School, in the narrow sense of the word. Is thisbad? Absolutely not, since French painting has never offered such a lavishharvest.'6

In studying the constellation of artists selected by the Society, only two orthree names have excited the attention of scholars.7 Artists of the Impressionist orproto-Symbolist generations seem not to have been taken up by the generation of1905. But the CeÂ zanne exhibition of 1904 has been rightly singled out by RobertBoardingham as symptomatic of an aesthetic tendency among younger paintersaffiliating themselves with a figure still ostracized by the bulk of critical opinion.8

At the much better-known CeÂ zanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne of 1907,the outpouring of texts swamped the much larger retrospectives given to BertheMorisot, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Seymour Hayden. As one critic put it, whilean official institution like the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was able to mountretrospectives of less controversial artists like James Whistler or EugeÁ ne CarrieÁ re,only the artists of the Salon d'Automne would dare honour a painter such asCeÂ zanne, who was still the object of widespread reproaches, `And that is why,piously, with the feeling of respect due to the patriarch, to the awakener of theirconsciousness, they have brought together these fifty of his works.'9

CeÂ zannism is a well-thumbed index of contemporary interests, but two wildcards remain in the pack of retrospectives: the Spanish baroque artist El Grecoand Ingres. The way El Greco, a Greek eÂ migreÂ of Italian formation, came toincarnate aspects of the Spanish national spirit for modernist critics in Castille andCatalonia has been studied with exceptional acuity by Robert Lubar. PabloPicasso, moving to Paris in 1903, had long identified (and already been identified)with El Greco, but the latter's translation to critical prominence in France wasslower.10 The Salon d'Automne retrospective of 1908 offers a tantalizingconvergence with a concurrent rise of non-canonical body-types, a rhetorical(and pictorial) insistence upon the primacy of expression, and a consideration ofabstraction in pictorial form. Yet in a sense El Greco appeared too late, comparedwith Ingres, to visualize this set of interests for the Parisian avant garde.

It was instead Ingres (after CeÂ zanne, of course) who, at the earlier, crucialmoment of 1905, offered young French artists a way into similar issues. Theradical potential of his art was riven by Ingres's formidable and problematic statusas the authoritarian leader of the French neoclassical school, the perfectionist who



influenced so many of the pompiers who had dominated late nineteenth-centuryofficial art and opposed the independent avant gardes.

To situate Ingres at the source of twentieth-century modernism has been anaccepted position in recent decades,11 without scholars noticing that it was in 1905that he was thus first construed by some critics. It is ironic that Ingres wasexhibited together with the indeÂpendant Manet in October 1905, whose claims tobe the first great modernist have been so entrenched in twentieth-centuryhistoriography.12 Twenty-five oil paintings and five pastels by Manet representedhis work in a more comprehensive way than the scattered collection of sixty-eightworks ± largely drawings, studies and portraits ± by Ingres.13 Among the criticswho produced so much copy on this occasion, these twin retrospectives of Ingresand Manet attracted far more discussion than the notorious exhibition of the`Fauves' in room number seven at the Grand Palais. Already at the gala vernissage,according to Louis Vauxcelles: `The Bain turc, by Ingres, excites interminableaesthetic controversies. [The Impressionist Armand] Guillaumin doesn't like it,and says so squarely; [the Intimist] Charles GueÂ rin is pained, and treatsGuillaumin as an heretic.'14

Already the generational split ± between Impressionists and the revisionistgeneration of Matisse ± is evident in this fragment of debate. What Jourdaincalled the `diametrically opposed' pair Manet/Ingres created a discursivedisturbance in salon reviews that the critics struggled to reconcile. The Symbolistcritic Gustave Kahn (perhaps echoing Elie Faure, author of the Salon's cataloguepreface) emphasized their coevality in a struggle for progress:

Ingres and Manet are face to face. It's an excellent idea to show, in asalon of combat, two masters who were essentially and in their own waysfighting artists of their own era. Ingres was, compared to David's school,a revolutionary, and he remained in himself a violent and ill-disciplinedmaster.15

In trying to construe Ingres as a revolutionary Kahn brings him into line with thepopular image of Manet, and makes both of them symbolic patrons of this new`salon de combat' (military similes proliferate in this men's club of criticism). Themain fight, it cannot be forgotten, was between a hostile public and corps decritique and the Fauve painters. Matisse's Femme au chapeau, one of severalworks derisively reproduced in L'Illustration, exemplified the highly provisionalart that led one wit to call the next Salon a deÂbauche d'eÂbauches.16

It was open to the more resourceful opponents of the Salon d'Automne to readthe retrospectives in quite another sense ± as working to deny the validity of thefiliation, as well as to discredit the work of the Fauves and others. CamilleMauclair, a neo-conservative formerly associated with the Mercure de France,marks this tendency. In his essay `The Crisis of Ugliness in Painting' he, like thecartoonist Faivre, imagines Ingres and Manet returning from the dead to expresstheir contempt for the young school which laid claim to them:

They've done well to place Manet and Ingres at the door of thisassemblage, with the air of considering them as patrons; it's no less true



however that M. Ingres would have withdrawn his works withimprecations, and Manet would have shrugged his shoulders and uttereda few bon mots at the sight of their so-called descendants. The magnificentdrawing of Ingres, the fine loyalty and the laborious conscience of Manetin such a place constitutes a crushing denunciation . . . of these people whomake a claim upon them.17

It is perhaps not surprising that the author of these lines, an increasingly vitriolicopponent of contemporary art who took refuge in the by then decades-oldaesthetic of the first Impressionists, chose a course that led down the path topolitical reaction and, in the aftermath of World War I, to the anti-semitism of aJew concealing his origins, as Romy Golan has shown.18

It is piquant that the artist±organizers of the Ingres retrospective (to whom Iwill turn shortly) had to do business with collectors and curators who may haveabhorred their work. The deferential tone of art critics towards the constituencyof owners and gatekeepers marks this discursive overlap. The Bain turc had beenput on public exhibition for the first time in recent memory: when Ingres sold it tothe Prince NapoleÂ on in around 1859 in its original rectangular format, the owner'swife, the Italian Princesse Clothilde, found its overt sensuality objectionable. Shehad her husband return it to the eighty-year-old Ingres, who revised the image intocircular form, making numerous adjustments to the composition, and placed it ina tondo frame.19 It was then sold to the Turkish Ambassador Khalil Bey, thatfamous collector of highbrow painterly erotics (he also owned Courbet's Originedu monde and Les deux amies), and caused a sensation when exhibited at the saleof his collection in 1867.20

In 1905 the Bain turc's owner was the Prince AmadeÂ e de Broglie, member of aprominent aristocratic family of former field marshals, OrleÂ anist politicians andgentleman scholars. The name de Broglie is famous among Ingres-lovers for twoof his greatest portraits, both now in New York: those of the Vicomtessed'Hausonnville (1845), and the Princesse de Broglie (1853), daughter anddaughter-in-law respectively of Ingres's friend and patron Duc Albert de Broglie.21

Both pictures were then in family hands. AmadeÂ e de Broglie had acquired the Bainturc through his connections with the Say family: the picture had passed fromKhalil Bey to the collection of Constant Say, and then to Henry Say, before goingto his brother-in-law AmadeÂ e de Broglie in the late nineteenth century. No doubtde Broglie valued his family's rich connections to the painter Ingres, but thesubject must also have appealed, if not for its marginal Orientalism (he had aninterest in things Oriental, travelling with his wife to French Indochina prior to1904),22 then for its eroticism.

De Broglie's decision to display the Bain turc at the Salon d'Automne may wellhave been prompted by an interest in publicizing the masterpiece prior to its eventualsale. It is no coincidence that the two leading Ingres scholars of the day, HenryLapauze and Jules MommeÂ ja, each contributed separate (and in fact rivalrous)learned articles on the work to the two premier (and competing) art history journals.Henry Lapauze, the leading Ingres expert and a collector, gave an illustrated historyof the image through the various phases of its production, including the photographof its initial rectangular format. Lapauze published this now-famous clicheÂ Marville,



placing before the readers among the Salon d'Automne artists the concept of theBain turc as a site of pictorial revision, an effect amplified by the numerouspreparatory drawings in the exhibition. Lapauze's article was published just beforethe Salon d'Automne opened, thus consecrating the event.23 This is not to suggestthat Lapauze or MommeÂ ja had a commercial interest as such: both may have seenscholarly ratification as not just professional duty, but as a way of offsetting thework's questionable reputation and helping its chances of entering the nationalcollections ± which soon came to pass.

MommeÂ ja, in his capacity as curator of the MuseÂ e de Montauban, whichhoused the Ingres estate, ensured the Bain turc was displayed in Paris surroundedby a group of at least eighteen (and probably many more) studies in graphite onpaper, and one single-figure oil study on panel, now called La femme aux troisbras (plate 48).24 The impact of these studies on painters and critics in Paris ± asdistinct from the Bain turc canvas ± needs to be emphasized. It is not possible to

48 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Femme aux trois bras, n.d. Oil on paper, 24.9 � 25.9 cm.MuseÂ e Ingres, Montauban. Vigne no. 2320. Photo: Roumagnac.



be sure which studies were shown, but I illustrate several (plates 48, 51, 52, 53 and54) to support my argument that they helped to precipitate a new graphic style forpainters such as Vallotton (in his drawings) and Matisse (in both paintings anddrawings), as well as effecting the thematics of figure painting by Picasso, Derainand others. For my purposes MommeÂ ja's 1906 article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts is most valuable for its illustrations: very likely the preparatory drawings heillustrated were among those he had sent to Paris the previous October. The textwas also graced by the reproductive engraving of the Bain turc by Jean Coraboeuf(plate 49). The disseminatory purpose of this engraving is unequivocal: accordingto MommeÂ ja `the Prince . . . after having it shown at the Salon d'Automne of 1905,offered to M. Coraboeuf, much the best interpreter of Ingres, the task of makingknown this capital work . . . [in which Ingres] anticipated his contemporaries byalmost a half-century.'25

It was in the context of a moral panic about the fate of French nationalheritage passing into foreign hands that the Bain turc went onto the market, onlyto be retained for the Louvre in 1911. Under leftist leadership since 1899, a newanti-clericalism in French government culminated in the passing in 1905 of EmileCombes's laws enacting the official separation of the Catholic Church and theFrench state. This meant that numerous teaching orders of the church weredissolved, and some of their properties placed on the market.26 For conservativecommentators this withdrawal of state support amounted to a carve-up of Frenchpatrimony, with masterpieces being parcelled out to foreign ± largely American ±museums and collectors. In some accounts the intermediaries in this treasonablestate of affairs were a rabble of `brocanteurs juifs', reducing art dealers to thecaricatural, but clever, `grasping, rasping moneybags' familiar in France fromHenri MuÈ rger's SceÁ nes de la vie de boheÁ me or in England from Charles Dickens'sOliver Twist.27

Given the limited resources of the Louvre, the potential exodus of Frenchtreasures could only be stopped by acts of private munificence. Some years afterthe 1905 exhibition the Bain turc was placed on the market, being sold to a leadingParisian dealer; it was then purchased for the sum of 150,000 francs by MauriceFeÂ naille, `the well-known Parisian amateur, who wanted to parry any possibleoffer coming from a foreign museum or collector'.28 In 1911 FeÂ naille, who was onthe board of the SocieÂ teÂ des Amis du Louvre, offered it exclusively to thisinfluential body of art patrons. Formed in 1897, one decade later the Friends of theLouvre numbered over 2,000 members and included many wealthy members ofParisian society. The Friends actively campaigned to retain for the nationalcollections those `beautiful productions of our national art already spied out byAmerica', a patrimony `threatened by the law of separation'.29 Thus as a gift fromthe Friends the Bain turc entered the Louvre in mid-1911, at the close of a second(and much larger) Ingres retrospective at the Galerie Georges Petit.

The constituency of artists and critics at the Salon d'Automne had to deal withthis grande monde in order to obtain the loans they wanted in 1905. Vauxcellesnamed the organizers of the retrospectives: the Manets were assembled by thedistinguished critic and friend of the Impressionists, TheÂ odore Duret. Duret'sprominence, and the fact that more works were in friendly hands, perhapsexplains the greater strength of the Manet retrospective. The Ingres show, a



modest affair compared to Lapauze's 1911 exhibition at the Galerie Petit, was dueto `the initiative and the unflagging zeal of one of the most refined painters of theyounger generation, M. Paul BaignieÁ res'.30 Trained by academic artists includingLeÂ on Bonnat, an important collector of Ingres, the landscapist BaignieÁ res hadgone on to join the liberal painting studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts run by theprominent Symbolist Gustave Moreau (another known admirer of Ingres). Thefact that BaignieÁ res moved in aristocratic circles no doubt helped him sourceworks, the Bain turc in particular.31 But he failed to persuade his former teacherBonnat to lend to the Salon d'Automne where, by 1905, the former students ofMoreau had emerged as a powerful grouping. They included the Society's vice-president George DesvallieÁ res, Moreau's former favourite Georges Rouault,Charles GueÂ rin, and the emerging group of Fauves: Matisse, Albert Marquet,Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin and Jean Puy.

49 Jean Coraboeuf, after Ingres, Le Bain turc, 1906. Burin engraving, 15.7 cm diameter, aspublished in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1 September 1906.



The role of such young artists in leading an appreciative reappraisal of Ingreswas evident to Gustave Kahn:

in the youthful milieux no-one contests Ingres and everyone gives Manetthe recognition due to him . . . All the artists of the Salon d'Automne, thestudents of Gustave Moreau like DesvallieÁ res, Rouault and Matisse, theImpressionists like Renoir . . . the Symbolists like GueÂ rin . . . the intimistslike Vuillard admit Ingres and Manet to their complete admiration andplace them amongst the inventors and propagators of beauty.32

Kahn strategically contrasted the fealty of such artists to Ingres against those ofthe reigning academicians like Bouguereau or Bonnat. `No affiliation links theircanvases to his, whereas Ingres touches on Impressionism by his influence onEdgar Degas, his direct continuer,' he wrote.33 But in the long passage above,Kahn failed to see the fine grain of aesthetic and political allegiances in theincreasingly factionalized Salon d'Automne.

The most interesting contrast to the Fauve claim on Ingres was not that of theAcademicians, but the grouping around the Symbolist painter and leading arttheoretician Maurice Denis, who had been a founding member of the Nabibrotherhood in the early 1890s. Denis's case was complex: on the one hand he wasthe most lucid French proponent of the difficult art of Gauguin and CeÂ zanne; onthe other, in his guise since the later 1890s as a Catholic artist and proselytizer fora return to classical values and the `tradition of Rome', he presented a right-wingposition that found sympathy with the new French nationalism of figures likeCharles Maurras and organizations like L'Action francË aise, of which he became alifelong member. In this guise, Denis the anti-Dreyfusard is revealed, like hisfriend Degas, as anti-semitic, holding opinions that occasionally crept into hisprivate journal. In 1899, at the height of Dreyfus paranoia, Denis was capable, forexample, of distinguishing between Latin and Semitic characteristics among hisown Nabis colleagues (his published writings never made such claims).34

Denis had better credentials for the admiration of Ingres than the artists of 1905:already in 1896 he had published an article on `The Arts of Rome or the ClassicalMethod', and in 1902 published in the new nationalist journal L'Occident his essay`The Students of Ingres', which studied the master's many immediate disciples andfound them all wanting. Denis proposed instead the relevance of the great classicalmaster to contemporary art around 1900 as providing a model for a new discipline,the formation of a truly French `school' that would combat what Denis saw as theanarchistic individualism that was plaguing new painting and sculpture. This wasthe position he opposed to the excesses of the Fauves in his eloquent reviews of theSalons d'Automne from 1905 on.35

It was against the claims of Denis (mirrored in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts byDenis's friend AndreÂ Gide, who reviewed the 1905 retrospectives and Salon) thatVauxcelles published his broadside, in the pages of the liberal daily Gil Blas. Asecular Jew and leftist, Vauxcelles had little sympathy forMaurice Denis, rejecting:

a certain Ingrist snobbery of which M. Maurice Denis . . . has recentlybecome the propagator. On the pretext of a return to French classicism,



people (and nothing is more piquant than finding . . . the author of theHommage aÁ CeÂ zanne in the posture of a counter-revolutionary) want toimpose upon us not only the magnificent Ingres of the pencil drawings,but also `Monsieur Ingres', the terrible dogmatic reactionary.36

Vauxcelles took it on himself instead to argue the progressive perspective onIngres offered by the Salon d'Automne and its young painters (many of whom heprobably knew):

There is Ingres and Ingres. I take it for granted that our Salon did not wishto exalt the creator of the Jeanne d'Arc, that glacial image . . . or the pseudo-Hellenism of the Stratonice. All the official apostasy of Ingres is invalid. Whatwe love, what is ageless . . . is the lyric and profound realism of the lead-pointdrawings, masterpieces of sagacity; it is the acute, imperious vision whichtakes hold of the contour of beings and of things with a singular authority;that marvelous graphic gift already perfectly formed from the beginning; it isthat pagan southerner's sensual love for the beauty of form . . . What wevenerate, what the Salon d'Automne glorifies are the nudes, the odalisques,the women at the bath, the portraits . . . It is Mme DevaucË ay, vermillion andgold fruit . . . it is Bertin, mixture of good-natured astuteness and intellectualweight. VoilaÁ the Ingres one must love.37

This curious trope of the two Ingres, one of whom is anathema to theprogressive painters of the Salon d'Automne, the other embraced by them, mirrorsa constant of Ingres criticism at least since Baudelaire's time: the undecidability ormultivalency of his work. Delacroix had worked across a comparable range ofgenres and scales without suffering this critical schizophrenia. But Gustave Kahnwas equally emphatic, rejecting Ingres's official decorative work (like theApotheosis of Homer, see plate 41, page 729) in favour of the female portraits,ìmprinted with a passionate sensuality', the drawings, `with their search for theardent fine line', and a general ècstasy before the morceau nu'.38

It is surprising how little critics dwelled upon the actual subject of the Bainturc, that meticulous fiction of an oriental seraglio which occasioned theoctogenarian's ècstasy'. If this lacuna corresponds to a modernist impatience withthe literary, it was nevertheless filled by the art historians: Lapauze for the firsttime published the passage from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letterswhich inspired Ingres (who had copied it into his notebooks). Montagu'sdescription of the two hundred naked women she had moved amongst as a guestat the harem baths at Adrianople was interpreted by Ingres, as was evident even toGautier in 1867, by re-using numerous figures from all stages of his earlier career.Thus the bath becomes, in Uwe Fleckner's phrase, a veritable `paintedretrospective'.39

Just how writers in 1905 responded to the visual libertinage of this Ingresmakes interesting reading. The decorous Lapauze permitted himself (`pourquoi nepas le dire,' he wrote) to characterize the Ingresque physical type in the fifty-oddMontauban drawings:



Ingres at every stage had a cult of woman, a certain kind of woman,abundant and fleshy . . . Where better to see them than . . . in hisMontauban croquis, which show us Ingres as he was, a passionate lover ofnature . . . right up to the point when the second Mme Ingres, entering hisstudio, overhead the enthusiastic old man pointing to his model andexclaiming Ìs she not beautiful! Look at these admirable lines! Look at thissupple body, this firm breast, these superb haunches, look!'40

One feels for Mme Ingres in this reÂ cit, this outbreak of the lubricious in thescholarly text. There was something excessive about the idea of a very elderly manconfronting the naked model in his studio; more to the point, if, in reality, hisphysical powers had failed him, in the field of painting Ingres's abilities wereundimmed. And in this act of imagination the octogenarian no longer feltconstrained, on the contrary he went for broke ± to the point, Denis suggests, ofsurrendering rational control:

Some have mentioned senility with regard to the Bain turc , I imagine asmuch on account of the subject, which is extremely voluptuous, as for theawkwardness of the figures . . . They say that it summarizes all the beautiesdear to M. Ingres. He painted it at 82 years of age: at that age M. Ingresstill loved women with the candour and the fervour of an adolescent.41

These are understanding words coming from an artist who, as Degas quipped,ònly paints bums which have never farted.'42 The point is that for the artists of1905, the conception of the erotic subject was so extreme that it did actually alterideas about what was possible in the realm of figure painting, not only regardingthe subject, but in formal terms as well.

Denis, for example, in remarking upon Ingres's `piling up of nudes, this littleheap of chubby bodies',43 points to the way the four main figures in theforeground can be read as a visual continuum, as a set of interlocking, tonallyrelated forms in the sense of the passage that Denis saw in the work of CeÂ zanne(and from which Picasso extrapolated). When it comes to defining the pictorialqualities of the Bain turc, Denis's views differed little from those of his ideologicalopponent Vauxcelles. To summarize, the 1905 progressive interpretation of Ingresfocuses on the artist's line, his way of seizing contours and of marshalling theminto a composition ± in short, his treatment of the arabesque. For most writers thisprocess is inseparable from the artist's eroticized gaze at the bodies of women, andfrom the liberties the artist had always taken with their anatomy.

The Anatomy of Modernity

Whether for condemnatory neoclassical critics or late twentieth-century feminists,the àwkwardness' of Ingres's painted bodies has fuelled debate about physicaltype, representation and pictorial expressivity. Ingres's 1814 Grande Odalisque, sothoroughly studied by Carol Ockman, 44 is central to this debate and must now bebriefly introduced. When first shown in the Salon of 1819, Landon wrote that it



had `neither bones nor muscles, neither blood, nor life, nor relief, indeed nothingthat constitutes imitation';45 the legend of the model's two vertebrae too manyarose soon after. In 1846 Paul Mantz condemned `this left thigh whichimprudently loses itself in the vague background planes . . . Happy will be hewho can see how it will re-attach to the torso',46 while Baudelaire, in his brilliantpages on Ingres, had been more willing to excuse a navel that strayed towards theribs, or a breast lodged close by to the armpit in the name of Ingres's `immoderateappetite for style'.47

In 1905 the perverse anatomy of Ingres's female nudes (amply displayed in hislithograph of the Grande Odalisque (see plate 26, page 709), in Venus on Paphosand the Bain turc) was linked to what could now be described as the dissentingclassicist's surprising `modernity'. ArseÁ ne Alexandre attempted to reconcile theapparently striking relevance of Ingres's picture with his academic pedigree:

His conception of form, which he genuinely believed he had inherited fromthe Greeks and Raphael . . . was in reality the most audacious and the mostmodern there was. The proof is visible in this admirable Bain turc: the artof our time has produced nothing freer, more emancipated, more classicand more passionate. Its framing, its proportions, its character, all of theseshow Ingres to be an ancestor of those young `deformers' at whose workyou may smile today.48

At a moment when those `young deformers' of the avant garde were usingCeÂ zanne's bathers to help break the mould of academic anatomy once and for all,Ingres's distortions provided a second seminal precedent. The ideological value ofthe Ingresque body differed from that of CeÂ zanne, that autodidact bohemian whohad failed utterly to garner official credentials. Ingres's reputation was that of asupreme technician of the male figure, as was evident in his studies for Saint-Symphorien exhibited in the retrospective.49 The fascination of Ingres was that thesupposed intensity of his perceptions, the volcanic temperament about which somany anecdotes abounded, supervened his knowledge of correct form and led todepartures that elaborated his personal conception of the body. Perhaps forsimilar reasons, but by very different pathways Ingres and CeÂ zanne converged inthe matter of producing original images of the body.

Thus construed, Ingres's contemporaneity helps to explain the pictorialresponses of avant-garde painters to the Bain turc, long recognized but worthy offurther inquiry.50 The words of FeÂ lix d'Anner, who said of the Bain turc that`modern art itself has achieved nothing less classical', seem almost prophetic: `Andamongst our toughest innovators, how many are there whose search for thebeautiful will increasingly lead them back to the supreme simplicity of the peÁ reIngres?'51 Leaving the interest of art-critical representations of the Ingresretrospective to one side, it is the way Ingres's painting and drawing tookvisually in art practice that makes his case so commanding. I will take three artistsfrom very different camps ± Fauvist, proto-Cubist and Intimist ± as the mostevident measures of this response.

There is abundant pictorial evidence that Matisse was impressed by Ingres'sarabesque while studying the Bain turc in 1905. Almost immediately afterwards,



50 (above) Henri Matisse, Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905±06.Oil on canvas, 174 � 241 cm. The Barnes Foundation,Merion, Pennsylvania. Inv. no. BF 719. Copyright ß 2000The Barnes Foundation.51 (left) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Danseuse etmusicienne noire, n.d. Graphite on tracing paper, 42.6 �15.2 cm. MuseÂ e Ingres, Montauban. Vigne no. 2309.52 (below) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Quatrefemmes, n.d. Graphite on tracing paper, 22.5 � 22.5 cm.MuseÂ e Ingres, Montauban. Vigne no. 2312. Photo:Roumagnac.

ßAssociationofArt

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this chief of the `young deformers' began work on the Bonheur de vivre (plate 50).Matisse's overall conception of a multi-figured scene with a pronounced eroticelement has been linked to precedents other than Ingres, including his own earlierwork and a print by Carracci. What has not been considered in detail are thedrawings in the Ingres retrospective, either for their motifs, or as examples of thetechnique of drawing. Scholars have also associated Matisse's painting withIngres's L'Age d'or, especially with its round of dancers, a link strengthened by thefact that a Dessin pour la Composition de l'Age d'or was on display in 1905.52

Among the hundreds of studies for this subject at the MuseÂ e de Montauban,several concentrate just on this ring of moving figures.

Other figures in the Bain turc which seem to have inspired Matisse weredepicted with more individuated eÂ clat in separate studies. Thus, the standingdancer with arms above her head in the canvas is beautifully studied in aMontauban drawing (Danseuse et musicienne noire, plate 51), which could havebeen one of those included at the Salon d'Automne exhibition. Its graphicreductionism is much closer to the left-hand standing figure in Matisse's Bonheurthan in the oil version. Matisse's figure borrows the head of an Ingres sketch(Quatre femmes, plate 52) for the Femme aux trois bras in which the schematicforms of the body are little more than outlines, and no facial features areprovided. One sees here a formula for the outline figure style of the Bonheur ingeneral. Matisse was criticized harshly for neglecting to give facial features to hisfigures, but if one looks at Ingres's fragments, such as Quatre femmes andL'Endormie (son buste) (plate 53, a study of the lost bather in the first, squareversion), Ingres provided a precedent for the practice. Finally, the most bizarrefigure in the Bonheur, the pair of lovers on the right who share just one head, isalso elucidated by the Bain turc drawings. Through their linear overlaps, severalof Ingres's fragmentary studies, such as Deux femmes allongeÂ es (plate 54), suggestthe inscription of one body over another, to the point of limbs being shared. Insum the new technique Matisse used to render figures in the Bonheur seemsindebted to the `supreme simplicity' of Ingres, drawn sketches which, with apronounced outline and no internal modelling, exemplify the `imperious visionwhich takes hold of the contour of beings and of things', as Vauxcelles put it in hisSalon review.

The Ingresque light that played over other figures in the avant garde was quitedifferent. Pablo Picasso, who from late 1905 onwards began to link his workexplicitly with that of the Parisian avant garde, was helped on his way by Ingres.His Harem (plate 55) is obviously close in theme, although given a Spanishinflection (the work dates to his 1906 trip to Horta da Ebro in the Pyrenees) by thepresence of the old madam in the corner and the phallic porron in the hands of thecolossal muscle-man (no eunuch, he is all there). Two figures seem directquotations from Ingres: the skinny dancing girl at rear, which recalls the dancer inIngres's Danseuse et musicienne noire, and this brothel guard. In transformingIngres's odalisque into a hefty male, The Harem seems less a homage than ahumorous bricolage.

Illustrating such comparisons, Pierre Daix was unaware that Ingres's paintedacadeÂmie, La femme aux trois bras (plate 48) was almost certainly exhibited at theSalon d'Automne.53 In it, Ingres provided two possible positions for the woman's



53 (left) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, L'Endormie(son buste), n.d. Graphite onpaper, 27.3 � 22.2 cm. MuseÂ eIngres, Montauban. Vigne no.2330. Photo: Roumagnac.54 (below left) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Deux femmesallongeÂes, n.d. Graphite ontracing paper, 18.5 � 18.3 cm.MuseÂ e Ingres, Montauban.Vigne no. 2332. Photo:Roumagnac.



55 Pablo Picasso, The Harem, summer 1906. Oil on canvas, 154.3 � 109.5 cm. The ClevelandMuseum of Art, Leonard J. Hanna, Jr., Collection. Copyright ß 2000 Succession Picasso.



arms: raised above the head in a gesture of luxuriation, and with the right armresting gently on the thigh. Magnificent in its materiality (the head was based onthat of Ingres's first wife), the Femme aux trois bras is a work of simultaneity, inthe Cubist sense of two gestures given spatial definition in the one picture. Yet it ismost un-Cubist in its complete mimetic realization. With the several relatedMontauban drawings that were presumably exhibited, the Femme aux trois brashad repeated resonances in Picasso's art of 1906±07. In one small work the artistimposed the hooded face of his lover Fernande Olivier onto the body of one suchreclining woman ± Fernande imagined here as a beauty chosen from Ingres'sharem, just as the scholars have shown Ingres utilizing the portraits of several ofhis past loves in the Bain turc.

Closest to the technical refinement of Ingres's work was the painter (andwriter) FeÂ lix Vallotton. His meticulous Femmes au bain of 1907 features nakedEuropean women posed awkwardly in a contemporary bath-house setting ± nophantasm of the Orient was required as a pretext for nudity here. It wasacknowledged by his friend Denis that Vallotton's rather unclassifiable style waspredicated on a long study of Ingres, and is most evident in drawings like Studyfor `The Turkish Bath' (plate 56), which employs a graphic style comparable toboth Matisse in the Bonheur and the Bain turc drawings. While Vallotton'stechnical mastery won praise at the Salon, his figure painting was said to be cold,lacking the `frisson of sensuality'.54 This was never a charge laid against Ingres'sBain turc at the time, although it was said about its older and stately avatar, theGrande Odalisque.

56 FeÂ lix Vallotton, Study for `The Turkish Bath', 1907. Graphite on paper, 18 � 24.3 cm.Galerie Vallotton, Lausanne. Copyright ß 2000 Fondation FeÂ lix Vallotton, Lausanne.



Face-off: Olympia and La Grande Odalisque

In February 1907 Manet's Olympia was transferred from the MuseÂ e duLuxembourg to be installed in the Salle des Etats of the Louvre. There it washung as a pendant to the Grande Odalisque, a juxtaposition that provoked adebate comparable ± except in its asperity ± to that of the retrospectives of 1905.

The first requirement for elevation to the collections of the Louvre was that theartist no longer be living; the Luxembourg was, in contrast, subtitled a `MuseÂ e desartistes vivants'. But as JoseÂ phin PeÂ ladan aptly put it, `being dead does not qualifyone for immortality.'55 Acceding to the Louvre was a privilege that required supportfrom authorities at the highest level. It had been hard enough for the Impressioniststo enter the Luxembourg: the late Manet's Olympia had opened a path in 1890,presented to the state as a gift funded by a public subscription organized by ClaudeMonet. Other leading Impressionists had only won entry in 1897, through themuch-reduced but munificent gift of the painter Gustave Caillebotte.

Olympia was not the first Manet to be included in the Louvre collections,however: it was preceded ± six days earlier ± by the equally famous DeÂ jeuner surl'herbe, part of the gift to the Louvre of the Donation Moreau-NeÂ laton.Assembled over three generations, this remarkable collection included thirty-fiveCorots, fifty works on paper by Ingres and a dozen by Delacroix, as well as nineMonets, seven Sisleys, and, above all, the DeÂ jeuner sur l'herbe. For LouisVauxcelles,

M. Moreau-NeÂ laton has done for the Louvre what the late Caillebotte didfor the Luxembourg. Thanks to his example, M. Dujardin-Beaumetz mayperhaps be less severe towards the Olympia. Imagine that a recent petition(and it is true that it emanated from the Salon d'Automne!) humblyrequested that M. Beaumetz accord the exquisite and slender courtesanpainted by Manet the honour of a place at the Louvre. And that M.Beaumetz . . . answered through one of his employees that `there were wasno enough room!' Not enough room for the author of the Olympia!56

It is intriguing that a petition `emanating' from the Salon d'Automne (of whichVauxcelles was an honorary member) had failed to secure the transfer of thepainting from the left to the right bank of the Seine. It fell to a generation withmore clout ± that of Claude Monet ± to effect the change. Monet, and behind himthe politician Georges Clemenceau, were the power brokers in the affair. As ayoung politician Clemenceau had known Manet, who had painted his portrait. Apassionate anticleric and Dreyfusard (he had published Emile Zola's J'accuse in1898), Clemenceau was a member of successive socialist cabinets under PierreWaldeck-Rousseau and Emile Combes. Since 1906 he had been President of theCouncil of Ministers (that is, French premier) as well as Minister of the Interior,and thus oversaw the under-secretariat of Fine Arts. It was his friend Monet whoapparently suggested the transfer.57 The timing was right, as the accession of theDeÂ jeuner sur l'herbe to the Louvre would have undermined Beaumetz's negativeposition. There was a brusque `order from the PreÂ sident du Conseil to the Sous-seÂ cretaire des Beaux-Arts to have the Olympia installed in the Salle des Etats, and



since the 7th of February it has been enthroned there, as a pendant to theOdalisque coucheÂ e of Ingres.'58

The Salle des Etats was a place of honour for nineteenth-century French art.The Manet was placed in a `cut-off corner' of the room facing the GrandeOdalisque, and apparently surrounded by a number of other Ingres, including thePortrait de M. RivieÁ re.59 Elsewhere in the room were works by Ary Scheffer, PaulDelaroche, Henri Regnault, Messionnier and others, which Louis Rouartsuggested be replaced by CleÂ menceau (while the `mania for radical reform' wasupon him) with a `new and marvelous ensemble' of Corot, Delacroix, Ingres,Courbet, Daumier, and others.60

Whichever curator, artist or minister determined the `much anticipated' face-off between the two recumbent nudes, it had an immediate impact in the press.61

The middle-of-the-road L'Art et les artistes was typical in opining that justice hadfinally been done to Manet, whose nude `does terrible damage' to the Odalisque:ìt's a lesson in art history to see these pictures thus, the one all swollen andpinkish, the other of an intense vitality, an admirable realism.'62 Supporters ofManet were intensely gratified by the new, hallowed light in which his work nowbathed, and felt the claims of superior naturalism dated the Ingres nude of 1814.Thus for the Mercure de France the Grande Odalisque looked `conventional anddull in the face of the luminous pallor of its rival'. The Salle d'Etats increasedvisibility as well as aura, giving the Olympia `more air and a finer light: certainharsh passages faint away, a thousand delicate tonalities are revealed . . . I knowpeople who, up until now refractory to the grim eloquence of the Olympia, havesuddenly been converted.'63

There were rare but interesting voices which, perhaps inadvertently siding withM. Beaumetz and the Institut, decried the entry of Manet to the Louvre. PeÂ ladanlinked the case to the broader issue of the museum's function as a repository ofgreat masterpieces that time had proven: Òne goes to the Louvre to admire, as onedoes to church to pray.' In such an environment, he believed, Impressionism had noplace, while theOlympia did not even count as a goodManet ± ìt is the work of anamateur who did not know his meÂ tier.' Placing it opposite Ingres's GrandeOdalisque was `crushing', it was ùnpardonable, putting such a morceaud'ignorance opposite a morceau de science, the Odalisque of Ingres'.64

PeÂ ladan's second argument concerned the requirement that the Louvre beabove speculative commercial considerations. He names the Galerie Durand-Ruel,which had so long represented the Impressionists, as working to generate publicityin favour of the Olympia, and the `millions it represents in effigy'. `No doubt M.Dujardin-Beaumetz is unaware of the influence his gesture is going to have on thecurrent price and appreciation of an enormous stock of painted canvases.'65 It ison this issue of art-world machinations that Louis Rouart, of L'Occident, weighsin. Rouart was a friend of Degas and Denis and shared their conservative politics± the three went together at this time to a L'Action francË aise meetingcommemorating the original dismissal of Alfred Dreyfus.66 In his aestheticaffections Rouart was a supporter of Manet and dismissed Peladan's diatribeagainst the artist's presence at the Louvre. Selecting the Olympia showed goodjudgement, and Rouart asks rhetorically to whom France should entrust theselection of works from the Luxembourg: certainly not to the men of the Institut,



who would select each other and show Rembrandt the door. Should the right ofselection to go `some band of audacious journalists, clandestinely backed by asyndicate of Jewish financiers?', he asks. Sounding like an allusion to Vauxcelles'spetition, this semitic alternative would play into the hands of the `brocanteursjuifs', whom Rouart claimed were currently pillaging the French patrimony. It isbetter, he concludes, to have recourse to Clemenceau, that `authoritarian Jacobinwith a mania for radical reforms'.67

Right-wing hysteria about the Louvre and Manet's ranking alongside Ingresclearly involved matters well beyond the Salle des Etats. But it was in that room,visited by many artists at the time, that the most interesting positions emerged. Afew years later Guillaume Apollinaire recalled feeling that Olympia, by no meansManet's best work, was revealed as of `little more than historical interest' whenhung next to the Ingres.68 According to Matisse's friend Jean Puy, Matisse wasone of the artists who preferred the Grande Odalisque. This was because, saysPuy, `the sensual and wilfully chosen line of Ingres seemed to him more suited tothe needs of painting.'69

These comments indicate how the elevation of Manet to the Louvre once moreplaced the aesthetics of Ingres before the avant garde. The superior interest of Ingres,already emerging at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, betrays the impatience withImpressionism that Matisse and the generation of 1905 expressed. The recuperationof the erstwhile arch-academic over Manet was a surprising reversal of the prioritiesso vigorously defended by the previous generation (as revealed, for example, in thepaean of praise to Manet published by Emile Bernard at the time).70 Matisse's viewof Ingres betrays a concept of painting as a matter of the deliberative constructionand arrangement of the image by lines and forms. It concurs with those critics whosingled out the pleasures of Ingres's undulating line, his arabesque, as the mostcontemporary feature of his art, while foreshadowing Matisse's theses aboutpainting as a self-referential system developed in his 1908 Notes d'un peintre.

Matisse's extrapolations from Ingres continued in the two versions of Le Luxepainted in the aftermath of the Olympia/Odalisque controversy. Le Luxe I wasMatisse's major entry to the 1907 Salon d'Automne, and amidst the generalcritical bewilderment, a dubious ArseÁ ne Alexandre recognized the work'sIngresque traits, describing Matisse as a `vivid distorter who is evolving with adaring timidity [sic] towards Ingres'.71 The Ingriste FeÂ lix Vallotton was a rareunequivocal defender of this work and of Matisse's `hypnotic and tremblingline'.72 Le Luxe II (plate 57) pursues the evolution towards Ingres in terms of bothcolour and line. Aggressive complementary contrasts have been replaced by thebland pastels of mural decoration. The much crisper outline drawing of thefigures is neatly edged with paint, as if in demonstration of Ingres's adage thatonce the drawing of a figure is fixed, then the colour can be simply filled in. Onecould argue that this crisp, unmodelled outline drawing, the coÃ teÂ croquis criticizedby Matisse's friend Michel Puy, confirmed the technical suggestions created by theassembled croquis that had surrounded the Bain turc in 1905.73

The final resonance of Ingres I want to evoke concerns the figure painting ofCubism, already beginning to emerge in Picasso's hands during 1907. MichaelMarrinan first noticed that a Picasso gouache in the series leading up to the 1907Demoiselles d'Avignon was in fact a proto-Cubist copy of the Grande Odalisque



(plate 58).74 Another echo of the 1907 Olympia/Odalisque debates, it could easilyhave been painted in the Salle des Etats, Picasso taking his place briefly among thecopyists who regularly worked there. It shows that Picasso's interest was focusedon the older master, whose work he analysed in a series of jagged planes thatresume and compact the essentials of the composition.75

The Picasso Odalisque provides little sense of the deeper relevance of Ingres toCubism. Apollinaire insisted upon it after the broader group of Cubists beganexhibiting, on the occasion of the 1911 Ingres retrospective at the Galerie GeorgesPetit organized by Lapauze (full of famous paintings, hundreds of drawings, theOdalisque aÁ l'esclave, and the Bain turc just before its transfer to the Louvre).76

The often impolite Apollinaire was full of respect for Ingres, dwelling upon theGreek ideal, classical beauty, and Ingres's way of overcoming the ugliness of themodel to achieve his own brand of style.77 When he took up the cudgels for theCubists at the Salon d'Automne, Apollinaire wrote: `Those who take Cubism for apractical joke are completely wrong. They demonstrate simply that while thelesson of Ingres has not been lost on these artists, the public and a good many artwriters have not understood it at all.'78

57 (left) Henri Matisse, Le LuxeII, 1907±08. Distemper on canvas,209.5 � 139 cm. Statens Museumfor Kunst, Copenhagen. Inv. no.KMSr76. ß Succession HenriMatisse, Paris.58 (right) Pablo Picasso,Odalisque, after Ingres, summer1907. Watercolour, gouache andpencil, 48 � 63 cm. MuseÂ ePicasso, Paris. Zervos XXVI, 194.ß Succession Picasso. Photo:ReÂ union des museÂ es nationaux.



What constituted this `lesson of Ingres' that so many writers (echoing the title ofLapauze's catalogue preface) invoked?79 For Raymond Bouyer, a good critic leftbehind by events, the lesson Ingres taught was the need to return to a directobservation of nature, not launch into abstraction and primitivism: `We are fed up',he lamented, `with these self-styled ingriste Fauves, with these more or less Pata-gonian Cubists.'80 Such remonstrations aside, there are clear signs that a quite newreading of Ingres, informed by the pseudo-scientific metaphysics of the Cubiststudios, was beginning to emerge. One of the most intellectually substantial apolo-gists of Cubism (as well as a brilliant commentator on Matisse) was Jacques RivieÁ re,a close friend of the young Cubist painter AndreÂ Lhote. In a superb but little-knownmeditation on the Ingres exhibition, RivieÁ re devoted several pages to Ingres's trait,or drawn line, in a discussion that touched often on the Bain turc. There are vitalistovertones to RivieÁ re's theory of waves emanating from the human body:

Every living being radiates; it permits its form to . . . incessantly detachfrom it, like a beautiful phantom which quickly dissipates. By each of itsgestures it releases gentle invisible circles . . . Ingres's trait gathers up thisgraceful emanation, halts it just as it leaves the body . . . imposes on it anexquisite limit . . . The drawing of Ingres is made of a few perfect lines.Around the body they are posed like weightless arcs and delicate circles . . .So one also explains [his] bold yet invisible distortions. The trait musteverywhere precede the movement in order to enclose it, it must go at once



to the end of a gesture to arrest it. The trait exceeds measure, in order toimpose it.81

This modernist poetics of graphic form in Ingres displays a preoccupation withthe duration of gesture, both of the artist as he makes his line, and the modelwhose movements or corporeal aura suggest a series of graphic `stoppages' (to usethe term Marcel Duchamp used around this time). Yet there were more pragmatic,less Bergsonian accounts of what the Cubists claimed to learn from Ingres. Themost lucid text comes from the same milieu of Cubist studios: AndreÂ Lhotehimself, who after World War I added criticism to his practice as an exhibitor andteacher of a systematized, academic Cubism. In 1921 Lhote published a cleveressay that aimed to satisfy the President of the French Republic upon opening yetanother Ingres retrospective: M. Millerand had asked an astonished Ingrist guide(possibly Lapauze) to demonstrate the link said to exist between Ingres and Cubistpainting.82 In so doing Millerand registered the persistence of the `bizarre culturaljuxtaposition' I noted at the outset, when Ingres first loomed into view among theFauves of the 1905 Salon d'Automne.

Lhote's reply was based on an extended reading of the Louvre's GrandeOdalisque, and in its arguments doubtless dates back to the era of 1910. Focusing onIngresque anatomy and broader problems of representation, Lhote made analogiesbetween ancient Egyptian painting, Ingres and the Cubist painters. In depicting thefemale body Egyptian art seeks, says Lhote, to present its most agreeable andexpressive aspects all at once. Of the face he writes: `The Egyptian artist makesrecourse to a subterfuge: imagining a displacement of his vision and integrating thereal, the absolute eye, the eye seen front on into the profile, which remains fullyilluminated.'83 The procedure for the stomach, the lines produced by the buttock orthe breast is analogous, providing `a complete inventory of the beauties of the femalebody'. Lhote argues that the distortions of normal appearance in Ingres's odalisquesserve analogous impulses, writing: `It is towards this same totalization of expressivevalues that these works of Ingres tend.'84 From this point comes Lhote's conclusion:guardians of Ingres's reputation should in fact be gratified by `the desire for theabsolute that excites certain Cubist painters to note simultaneously the differentproperties of objects, and which makes them reconcile in turn, on their panel, theseparate signs for a breast or a back, or the curvature and the profile of a bowl, filledwith pears at once round and triangular!'85

Lhote's neat demonstration closes a curious episode in the history ofrepresenting the body, one in which young painters intent in arriving at a newconception of the figure found a promising opening in a version of classicism thatseemed to their seniors the epitome of all they sought to escape. Ingres put thebody off-balance ± a subtle shift in the composure of the beau ideÂal ± and openedup a space that could be exploited to produce a realignment we might be lessinclined to call a revolutionary one.

Roger BenjaminAustralian National University



Notes

1 Research for this article was funded by anAustralian Research Council Small Grant at theUniversity of Melbourne; it grew from theepilogue of my essay Èxpression, Disfiguration:Matisse, the Female Nude and the AcademicEye', in Terry Smith (ed.), In Visible Touch:Modernism and Masculinity, Sydney andChicago, 1997, pp. 75±105. Thanks are due to JillCarrick, Peter Rudd and Natalie Adamson forresearch assistance in Paris.

2 See Kenneth Silver and Romy Golan, The Circleof Montparnasse: Jewish Artists in Paris, 1905±1945, New York, 1985; Norman Kleeblatt (ed.),The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice, NewYork, Berkeley and London, 1987; Linda Nochlinand Tamar Garb (eds), The Jew in the Text:Modernity and the Construction of Identity,London, 1995; and Catherine Soussloff (ed.),Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, Berkeleyand London, 1999.

3 FeÂ lix d'Anner, `Le Salon d'Automne',L'Intransigeant, 19 October 1905: àu milieu dece salon de bataille ouÁ tout se coudoie, depuisl'oeuvre conscientieuse du chercheur jusqu'auxplus carnavalesques eÂ lucubrations, fait apparaõÃ tretout aÁ coup l'oeuvre austeÁ re et si pure du grandIngres.'

4 Although current since the 1855 retrospectives ofIngres and Delacroix, the centennial anddecennial retrospectives of the French school heldat the Expositions universelles of 1889 and 1900promoted a wider historicist mentality. In the1890s an exhibiting society like the SocieÂ teÂ despeintres orientalistes francË ais used retrospectivesas a strategic tool for raising historicalconsciousness, establishing a genealogy, andpromoting a sense of vocation among aspiringcolonial artist-travellers.

5 Parallel issues are raised by the widespreadcopying of Old Master paintings by avant-gardeartists; see my `Recovering Authors: the ModernCopy, Copy Exhibitions and Matisse', ArtHistory, vol. 12, no. 2, June 1989, esp. pp. 189±93; Cornelia Homburg, The Copy turns Original:Vincent Van Gogh and a new approach totraditional art practice, Philadelphia, 1996; andSusan Grace Galassi, Picasso's Variations on theMasters: Confrontations with the Past, NewYork, 1996.

6 Charles Estienne, `Des Tendances de la peinturemoderne, xviii. Ce qui dit M. Frantz Jourdain',Les Nouvelles, 31 May 1909. `Les influences, d'unefacË on geÂ neÂ rale, me paraissent extraordinairementmultiples et souvent diameÂ tralement opposeÂ es,influences ouÁ voisinent Ingres et Manet, Poussin etSisley . . . Tiepolo et CeÂ zanne, Delacroix et Puvisde Chavannes'; ìl n'existe plus d'Ecole, dans lesens eÂ troit du mot. Est-ce un mal? Nullement,puisque jamais la peinture francË aise n'a donneÂ uneaussi fastueuse moisson.'

7 The complete list is: 1903: Paul Gauguin; 1904:Paul CeÂ zanne, Odilon Redon, Auguste Renoir,Alphonse Legros, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, andHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec; 1905: EdouardManet and J.-A.D. Ingres; 1906: Paul Gauguin,Gustave Courbet, EugeÁ ne CarrieÁ re, Dutert; 1907:Paul CeÂ zanne, Eva Gonzalez, Berthe Morisot,Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Seymour Hayden;1908: El Greco, Adolphe Monticelli, RodolpheBresdin, and Chifflart.

8 Apparently the first article devoted to a Salond'Automne retrospective and illustrated withthree valuable photographs of the installation,see Robert Boardingham, `CeÂ zanne and the 1904Salon d'Automne: `̀ Un chef d'une eÂ colenouvelle''', Apollo, vol. 142, no. 404, October1995, pp. 31±9.

9 G.-Jean Aubry, `La peinture au salond'Automne', L'Art Moderne, vol. 27, no. 41, 13Oct. 1907, p. 324. Èt c'est pourquoi pieusement,avec le sentiment de respect duÃ au patriarche, aÁl'eÂ veilleur de leurs consciences, ils ont reÂ uni cettecinquantaine d'oeuvres.'

10 Robert S. Lubar touches on the Salond'Automne's El Greco retrospective in his`Narrating the Nation: Picasso and the Myth ofEl Greco', in Jonathan Brown (ed.), Picasso andthe Spanish Tradition, New Haven and London,1996, p. 36; Lubar builds upon Jonathan Brown'sessay on El Greco criticism, Èl Greco, the Manand his Myths', in El Greco of Toledo, Boston,1982, esp. pp. 22±8.

11 A sustained consideration of the issue is UweFleckner, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: DasTuÈ rkische Bad. Ein Klassizist auf dem Weg zurModerne, Frankfurt am Main, 1996, a bookorganized around the advent of the Bain turc atthe 1905 Salon d'Automne; see also earlier textslike Robert Rosenblum, Ingres, New York, 1967;ReneÂ Jullian, Ìngrisme et nabisme' and MarcelGiry, Ìngres et le fauvisme', both in Ingres et soninfluence, Bulletin speÂ ciale des Amis du MuseÂeIngres, nos. 47 & 48, September 1980, pp. 47±53and 55±60, and the useful overview by PhilippeDagen, `L'Age d'Or: Derain, Matisse et le BainTurc', in Bulletin du MuseÂ e Ingres, vol. 53, 1984,pp. 43±54.

12 In a quite different sense Adrian Rifkin, in IngresThen, and Now, London, 2000, pp. 122±4, pairsManet with Ingres in considering the much laterwritings of Jean Cassou and Georges Bataille.

13 The Manets included such pieces as La musiqueaux Tuileries, Le vieux musicien, the Portraitd'Emile Zola, the ExeÂcution de l'empeÂ reurMaximilien and several plein-air paintings; worksby Ingres included numerous drawings andstudies for history and allegorical paintings, anumber of portraits (the best-known were thoseof M. Bertin, Hippolyte Flandrin and CharlesGounod), and the figure paintings AngeÂ lique,



VeÂnus aÁ Paphos, an AndromeÁ de, a Raphael et laFornarina, and two more studies of interest: adrawing for the composition of L'Age d'or andIngres's lithograph of the Grande Odalisque. SeeSocieÂ teÂ du Salon d'Automne. Catalogue de la 3eÁexposition, 1905, Paris, pp. 191±3 (Manet) and185±9 (Ingres).

14 Louis Vauxcelles, Ìmpressions de vernissage', GilBlas, 18 October 1905. `Le Bain turc, d'Ingres,suscite inteÂ rminables controverses eÂ stheÂ tiques.Guillaumin ne l'aime pas, et le dit carreÂ ment;Charles GueÂ rin est peineÂ , et traite Guillaumind'heÂ reÂ siarque.'

15 ArseÁ ne Alexandre, `Le Salon d'Automne', LeFigaro, 17 October 1905. Ìngres et Manet s'yfont vis-aÁ -vis. L'ideÂ e eÂ tait bonne de montrer,dans un salon de combat, deux maõÃ tres quifurent essentiellement et aÁ leur facË on des artistesde combat aÁ leur eÂ poque. Ingres fut, par rapportaÁ l'eÂ cole de David, un grand reÂ volutionnaire, et ildemeura en lui-meÃ me un maõÃ tre violent etindisciplineÂ .'

16 Raymond Bouyer, Èxpositions et concours.Salon d'Automne', Bulletin de l'art ancien etmoderne, no. 315, 20 October 1906, p. 262;further, on Fauvism and criticism, see my `Fauvesin the Landscape of Criticism: Metaphor andScandal at the Salon', in Judi Freeman et al., TheFauve Landscape, Los Angeles and New York,1990, pp. 241±66, and Philippe Dagen (ed.), Pourou contre le Fauvisme, Paris, 1994.

17 Camille Mauclair, `La crise de la laideur enpeinture', in Les trois crises de l'art actuel, Paris,1906, pp. 300±301. Òn avait beau placer Manetet Ingres au seuil de cet assemblage, en ayantl'air de les consideÂ rer comme des patrons; il n'eneÂ tait pas moins vrai que M. Ingres euÃ t retireÂ sestoiles en jurant, et Manet hausseÂ les eÂ paules etdit quelques bons mots, en voyant leur soi-disantligneÂ e. Le magnifique dessin d'Ingres, la belleloyauteÂ et la laborieuse conscience de Manet enun pareil endroit constituaient un eÂ crasantdeÂ menti . . . des gens qui se reÂ clamaient d'eux.'

18 See Romy Golan, `From Fin de SieÁ cle to Vichy:The Cultural Hygienics of Camille (Faust)Mauclair', in Nochlin and Garb, The Jew in theText, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 156±73.

19 In the extensive literature on the painting thethree outstanding studies are HeÂ leÁ ne Toussaint,Le Bain turc d'Ingres, Les dossiers dudeÂ partement des peintures, MuseÂ e du Louvre,Paris, 1971; Marilyn R. Brown's feministinvestigation (that best considers the issue ofOrientalism) `The Harem Dehistoricized: Ingres'sTurkish Bath', Arts Magazine, vol. 61, no. 10,1987, pp. 58±68; and Fleckner, Das TuÈ rkischeBad, op. cit. (note 11).

20 See TheÂ ophile Gautier, `Beaux-Arts: CollectionKhalil-Bey', Le Moniteur universel, 14 December1867, quoted in Roger Benjamin (ed.),Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee, Sydney, 1997,p. 70.

21 See Portraits by Ingres. Image of an Epoch, ed.Gary Tinterow and Philip Conisbee, New York,1999, cat. nos. 125 and 145.

22 See Etienne Righet, `Heures d'Asie: Le Cambodgeet les Ruines d'Angkor', in Bulletin de la SocieÂ teÂroyale de la geÂographie d'Anvers, vol. 28, 1904,p. 324, cited in Penny Edwards, Cambodge: theCultivation of a Nation, 1860±1945, forthcomingAnn Arbor, Michigan.

23 Henry Lapauze, `Le `̀ Bain Turc'' d'Ingres, d'apreÁ sdes documents ineÂ dits', La Revue d'art ancien etmoderne, vol. 18, 1905, pp. 383±96; proof thatthis text was available to critics and artists is thecitation of it in Raymond Bouyer, `Salond'Automne', Bulletin de l'art ancien et moderne,no. 275, 28 October 1905, p. 271.

24 The catalogue includes Le Bain turc, a Fragmentdu Bain turc (surely the Femme aux trois bras),and nine separate listings of Etudes pour le Bainturc. If each of these included at least two works,there must have been at least eighteen studies forthe painting on display. There is no way of beingcertain about which of the fifty-nine studies forthe work possessed by the MuseÂ e de Montaubancomprised the eighteen; as Vigne shows, the waythese drawings have been grouped varies overtime; see Georges Vigne, Dessins d'Ingres.Catalogue raisonneÂ des dessins du museÂe deMontauban, Paris, 1995, nos. 2305±2363.

25 Jules MommeÂ ja, `Le `̀ Bain turc'' d'Ingres',Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 3rd period, vol. 36, no.591, 1 September 1906, p. 196. `le Prince . . .apreÁ s l'avoir fait figurer au Salon d'Automne de1905, a bien voulu confier aÁ M. Coraboeuf, lemeilleur interpreÁ te qu'Ingres a jamais trouveÂ , lesoin de faire connaõÃ tre cette oeuvre capitale . . .[Ingres] devancË ait ses contemporains de preÁ s d'undemi-sieÁ cle'.

26 See Michael Marlais, Conservative Echoes in Fin-de-sieÁ cle Parisian Art Criticism, University Park,Pennsylvania, 1992, pp. 209±13.

27 Louis Rouart, in `Chroniques des museÂ es',L'Occident, vol. 11, April 1907, pp. 203±204wrote `tous les brocanteurs juifs de l'univers n'encontinueraient pas moins aÁ piller nos viellesmaisons France, nos eÂ glises et nos couvents'; the`moneybags' phrase is from Adrian Rifkin'silluminating `Parvenu or palimpsest: SomeTracings of the Jew in Modern France', inNochlin and Garb, The Jew in the Text, op. cit.(note 2), p. 279.

28 Anon, Èchoes et nouvelles', Bulletin de l'artancien et moderne, no. 503, 6 May 1911, p. 38.`L'amateur parisien bien connu, qui voulut ainsiparer aÁ une offre possible, venant d'un museÂ e oud'un collectionneur eÂ trangers'; Paul Jamotexpressed gratitude for the òpportune geÂ neÂ rositeÂd'un amateur qui s'empressa de soustraire cetableau aÁ des competitions redoutables et de letenir en reÂ serve pour le museÂ e'; Paul Jamot, `LeBain turc d'Ingres. Don des la SocieÂ teÂ des amisdu Louvre', MuseÂ es de France, 1911, p. 33.



29 Auguste Marquillier, `Revue de la quinzaine:MuseÂ es et collections', Mercure de France, vol.45, no. 1, 1 March 1907, p. 160.

30 Louis Vauxcelles, `Le Salon d'Automne', Gil Blas,17 October 1905. `due aÁ l'initiative et au zeÁ leinlassable d'un des plus raffineÂ s des peintres dela jeune geÂ neration, M. Paul BaignieÁ res'.

31 For a portrait of BaignieÁ res, see Francis B.Hyslop, Henry Evenepoel, Belgian Painter inParis, 1892±1899, University Park & London,1975, p. 30.

32 Gustave Kahn, Ìngres et Manet', La Nouvellerevue, vol. 33, 1905, p. 556: `dans les milieuxjeunes, personne ne conteste Ingres et tout lemonde rend aÁ Manet la justice qui lui est due . . .Tous les artistes du Salon d'Automne, les eÂ leÁ vesde Gustave Moreau comme DesvallieÁ res, Rouaultet Matisse, les impressionnistes comme Renoir. . . les symbolistes comme GueÂ rin . . . lesintimistes comme Vuillard admettentparfaitement dans leur admirations, Ingres etManet, les logent . . . parmi les inventeurs etpropagateurs de la beauteÂ .'

33 ibid., p. 557. Àucune filiateur ne reÂ unit leurstoiles aux siennes, tandis que Ingres touche aÁl'impressionnisme par son influence sur EdgarDegas, son continuateur directe'; it was noticedby at least one critic that Degas had failed tolend to the exhibition.

34 As Michael Marlais glosses it, `the Semitic tasteplaced little importance on figures and, therefore,drawing. It was a style suited for smallapartments. The Latin, on the other hand,concentrated on large paintings in which thehuman figure and symbolism played animportant part'; Marlais, op. cit. (note 26),p. 218, was drawing from entries in Denis'sJournal. Bonnard, Vuillard and Vallotton (alliedwith the Jewish patron and proprietor of theRevue blanche, ThadeÂ e Natanson), exemplifiedthe former, and Denis, Paul Ranson and PaulSeÂ rusier the latter.

35 These essays are collected in Maurice Denis,TheÂories 1890±1910. Du symbolisme et deGauguin vers un nouvel ordre classique, Paris,2nd ed, 1920.

36 Louis Vauxcelles, `Le Salon d'Automne', Gil Blas,17 October 1905. `Certain snobisme ingriste dontM. Maurice Denis . . . se fit reÂ cemment lepropagateur. Sous preÂ texte de retour auclassicisme francË ais, on veut ± (et rien n'est pluspiquant que de trouver M. Maurice Denis, auteurde l'Hommage aÁ CeÂzanne, en posture de contre-reÂ volutionnaire) ± nous imposer, non seulementle magnifique Ingres des crayons, mais `̀ monsieurIngres'', le terrible dogmatique reÂ actionnaire.'

37 ibid. Ìl y a Ingres et Ingres. Je tiens pour assureÂque notre Salon n'a pas voulu exalter le creÂ ateurde la Jeanne d'Arc, glaciale image . . . ou lepseudo-heÂ llenisme de la Stratonice. Toutl'apostat officiel d'Ingres et caduc. Ce que nousaimons, ce qui est impeÂ rissable . . . c'est le

reÂ alisme ingeÂ nu et profond des mines de plomb,chefs-d'oeuvre de sagaciteÂ , c'est cette visionaigueÈ , impeÂ rieuse, qui s'empare du contour deseÃ tres et des choses avec une autoriteÂ singulieÁ re,. . . cet amour sensuel de paõÈ en meÂ ridional pour labeauteÂ de la forme . . . Ce que nous veÂ neÂ rons, ceque le Salon d'Automne glorifie, ce sont les nus,les odalisques, les femmes au bain, les portraits. . . c'est Madame DevaucË ay, fruit vermeil et doreÂ. . . c'est Bertin, meÂ lange d'astucieux bonhommeet de carrure inteÂ llectuelle. VoilaÁ l'Ingres qu'ilfaut aimer.'

38 See Kahn, Ìngres et Manet', op. cit. (note 32),p. 557: èmpreints d'une sensualiteÂ passionneÂ e';`la recherche de la belle ligne ardente'; `l'extased'Ingres devant le morceau nu'.

39 See Lapauze, `Le `̀ Bain turc'' d'Ingres', op. cit.(note 23), pp. 383±6; the phrase is from UweFleckner's Das TuÈ rkische Bad, op. cit. (note 11),p. 48, which is, with Marilyn Brown's earlier`Turkish Bath dehistoricized', the most detailedreconstruction of these sources; see also PatriciaCondon et al., In Pursuit of Perfection: the Art ofJ.-A.-D. Ingres, Louisville, Kentucky, 1983.

40 Lapauze, `Le `̀ Bain turc'' d'Ingres', op. cit. (note23), p. 386. Ìngres eut en tout temps le culte dela femme, d'une certaine femme, abondante etbien en chair . . . OuÁ rencontrerait-on, mieux que. . . dans les croquis de Montauban, qui nousmontrent Ingres tel qu'il eÂ tait, amant passionneÂde la nature . . . jusqu'aÁ l'eÂ poque ouÁ la secondeMme Ingres, peÂ neÂ trant dans son atelier, entendl'enthousiaste vieillard s'eÂ crier, en deÂ signant sonmodeÁ le: Voyez si elle est belle! Voyez ces lignesadmirables! Voyez ce corps souple, cette fermepoitrine, ces hanches superbes, voyez . . .!'

41 Maurice Denis, `De Gauguin, de Whistler et del'exceÁ s des theÁ ories', L'Ermitage, 15 November1905; repr. TheÂories, pp. 205±206. Òn a parleÂ deseÂ niliteÂ aÁ propos du Bain turc, autant j'imagine aÁcause du sujet qui est extreÃ mement voluptueux,que de la gaucherie des figures . . . On a dit qu'ilreÂ sumait toutes les beauteÂ s cheÁ res aÁ M. Ingres. Ill'a peint aÁ quatre-vingt deux ans: aÁ cet aÃ ge M.Ingres aimait encore les femmes avec la candeuret la ferveur d'un adolescent.'

42 Denis recounts the anecdote in his own Journal,vol. 2 (1905±20), Paris, 1957, p. 62. `Ce garcË on-laÁ , il ne fait que des culs qui n'ont jamais peÂ teÂ .'

43 Denis, `De Gauguin', op. cit. (note 41), ibid. `Cetamoncellement de nus, ce petit tas de chairspoteleÂ es'.

44 See Carol Ockman, Ingres' Eroticized Bodies.Retracing the Serpentine Line, New Haven andLondon, 1995, esp. chaps. 2, 4 and 5.

45 Landon cited in Jean Alazard, Ingres etl'Ingrisme, Paris, 1950, p. 112. `Ni os, ni muscles,ni sang, ni vie, ni relief, rien enfin de ce quiconstitue l'imitation'.

46 Paul Mantz, Salon de 1846, cited in ibid., p. 114.`Cette cuisse gauche qui s'eÂ gare imprudemmentdans la vague des seconds plans . . . Heureux



celui qui pourrait dire comment elle va serattacher au torse.'

47 Charles Baudelaire, `The Exposition Universelle,1855', in Art in Paris, 1845±1862: Salons andOther Exhibitions, trans. and ed. JonathanMayne, Oxford, 1965, p. 133.

48 ArseÁ ne Alexandre, `Le Salon d'Automne', LeFigaro, 17 October 1905. `Sa conception de laforme, qu'il croyait de bonne foi heÂ riteÂ e desGrecs et de RaphaeÈ l et respectueuse destraditions, eÂ tait en reÂ aliteÂ la plus audacieuse et laplus moderne qui fuÃ t. On en revoit ici la preuveavec l'admirable Bain turc; l'art de notre tempsn'a rien produit de plus affranchi, de plus libre,de plus classique et de plus passionneÂ . La coupe,les proportions, le caracteÁ re, tout cela montre enIngres un anceÃ tre de ces jeunes «deÂ formateurs»dont peut-eÃ tre vous sourirez aujourd'hui.'

49 Cat. nos. 23 and 24 are entitled Saint-Symphorienand Etude pour le Saint-Symphorien; one of thesewas very likely the small canvas of multiple malefigures and heads at the MuseÂ e de Montaubanillustrated in Georges Vigne, Ingres, trans. JohnGoodman, New York, London and Paris, 1995,p. 189.

50 Alfred Barr, Matisse: His Art and his Public,New York, 1951, p. 91, noted the relevance ofthe Ingres retrospective; see also the texts cited innote 11 above.

51 FeÂ lix d'Anner, `Le Salon d'Automne',L'IntransigeÂant, 19 October 1905. `l'art modernen'a rien fait de moins «classique»'; Èt combienen est-il parmi nos plus hardis novateurs, queleur recherche du beau rameÁ nera de plus en plusaÁ la supreÃ me simpliciteÂ du peÁ re Ingres.'

52 The Salon d'Automne drawing was from anothercollection, however; see Jack Flam's fine essay onthe Bonheur in Richard Wattenmaker et al.,Great French Paintings from the BarnesFoundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist andEarly Modern, New York, 1993, pp. 226±35.

53 Pierre Daix, `Historique des Demoisellesd'Avignon reÂ viseÂ aÁ l'aide des carnets de Picasso',in HeÂ leÁ ne Seckel (ed.), Les Demoisellesd'Avignon, vol. 2, Paris, 1988, p. 498. It wasboth illustrated and singled out for discussion byHenry Lapauze.

54 Louis Vauxcelles, `Le Salon des IndeÂ pendants',Gil Blas, 20 March 1908; `Le frisson desensualiteÂ '; further on this work, see Sasha M.Newman et al., FeÂ lix Vallotton, New Haven andLondon, 1991, pp. 222±5, and Jullian, Ìngrismeet nabisme', op. cit. (note 11), pp. 52±3.

55 [JoseÂ phin] PeÂ ladan, `Le MuseÂ e du Luxembourgcomme peÂ pinieÁ re du Louvre', Revue politique etlitteÂ raire (Revue bleue), vol. 7, no. 10, 9 March1907, p. 308. Ètre mort ne constitue pas un titred'immortaliteÂ .'

56 Louis Vauxcelles, `La collection Moreau-NeÂ latonau Louvre', Gil Blas, 1 February 1907. `M.Moreau-NeÂ laton fait pour le Louvre ce que feuCaillebotte fit pour le Luxembourg. GraÃ ce aÁ son

exemple, M. Dujardin-Beaumetz . . . sera peut-eÃ tre moins seÂ veÁ re envers l'Olympia. Songezqu'une peÂ tition reÂ cente (il est vrai qu'elle eÂ manaitdu Salon d'Automne!) solicita humblement M.Beaumetz d'accorder enfin la cimaise du LouvreaÁ l'exquise et fluette courtisane peinte par Manet. . . Et M. Beaumetz . . . fit reÂ pondre par un de sesemployeÂ s «qu'il n'y avait pas de place». Pas deplace pour l'auteur de l'Olympia!' The collectionwas temporarily displayed in the Pavillon deMarsan. See further Louis Vauxcelles, `Lacollection Moreau-NeÂ laton', Art et deÂ coration,vol. 21, January±July 1907, pp. 106±114.

57 Louis Rouart, `Chronique des museÂ es', op. cit.(note 27), p. 203 writes of Clemenceau `making,at the request of Claude Monet, the Olympiabrusquely enter the Louvre'. Thanks to CharlesSowerwine for clarifying the French ministerialchain of command.

58 Marquillier, `MuseÂ es et collections', op. cit. (note29), p. 161. ùn ordre du preÂ sident du Conseil ausous-secreÂ taire d'Etat des Beaux-Arts de faireinstaller l'Olympia dans la salle des Etats, etdepuis le 7 feÂ vrier elle y troÃ ne, en pendant del'Odalisque coucheÂ e d'Ingres'.

59 Anon, Èchos et nouvelles. MuseÂ e du Louvre',Bulletin de l'art ancien et moderne, no. 330,16 February 1907, pp. 50±1, and Marquillier,ibid.

60 Rouart, `Chronique des museÂ es', op. cit. (note27), p. 203.

61 Anon, `Le Carnet de l'amateur: Manet auLouvre', Le MuseÂe, vol. 4, 1907, pp. 87±8.`Comparaison tant attendue'.

62 Anon, Èchos des arts', L'Art et les artistes,vol. 2, no. 24, March 1907, p. xxiii. èlle faitveÂ ritablement du tort'; `c'est une lecË on d'histoirede l'art, ces deux toiles ainsi regardeÂ es, l'une,toute boursoufleÂ e, rosaÃ tre, l'autre, d'une vitaliteÂintense, d'un reÂ alisme admirable.'

63 Marquillier, `MuseÂ es et collections', op. cit. (note29), p. 161. `Conventionnel et terne en regard dela lumineuse paÃ leur de sa rivale'; `plus d'air etune lumieÁ re plus fine; certaines dureteÁ ss'eÂ vanouissent, mille tonaliteÂ s deÂ licates se reÂ veÁ lent. . . Et je sais des gens, jusqu'ici reÂ fractaires aÁl'aÃ pre eÂ loquence de l'Olympia, qui . . . ont eÂ teÂsubitement convertis.'

64 PeÂ ladan, `Le MuseÂ e du Luxembourg commepeÂ pinieÁ re du Louvre', op. cit. (note 55), pp. 308±309. Òn va, au Louvre, pour admirer, comme aÁl'eÂ glise pour prier'; `C'est l'ouvrage d'un amateurqui ne savait pas son meÂ tier'; ìmpardonnable, demettre un tel morceau d'ignorance vis-aÁ -vis d'unmorceau de science, l'Odalisque d'Ingres'.

65 ibid., pp. 308, 309. `Les millions qu'il repreÂ senteen effigie'; `M. Dujardin-Beaumetz ignore sansdoute l'influence de sa geste sur la coÃ te picturaleet la plus-value qu'il donne aÁ un stock eÂ norme detoiles peintes.'

66 See the entry for 4 January 1907 in Denis,Journal, vol. 2, op. cit. (note 42), p. 50.



67 Rouart, `Chronique des museÂ es', op. cit. (note27), p. 203. `Quelque bande de journalistesaudacieux, clandestinement soutenue par unsyndicat de financiers juifs'; `ce jacobinanarchiste et autoritaire a la manie des reÂ formesradicales.'

68 Guillaume Apollinaire, `La Vie artistique.Exposition Manet', L'IntransigeÂant, 19 June 1910,cited in Apollinaire, Chroniques d'art, 1902±1918,ed. L.C. Breunig, Gallimard, Paris, 1960, p. 144.`Cette Olympia d'un inteÂ reÃ t avant tout historiqueet dont on a fait au Louvre un pendant inattenduaÁ L'Odalisque d'Ingres.'

69 Jean Puy, `Souvenirs', Le Point, vol. 21, July1939, p. 36. `La ligne sensuelle et volontairementchoisie d'Ingres lui semblait eÃ tre plus conformeau besoin de la peinture.'

70 Anon [Emile Bernard], `L'Olympia de Manet, auLouvre', La Renovation estheÂ tique, vol. 5, May1907, p. 56 begins `C'est avec une joie reÂ elle quenous avons vu l'Olympia, de Manet, accrocheÂ eau Louvre, parmi les chefs-d'oeuvre dont elle estla fille.'

71 ArseÁ ne Alexandre, `Le Salon d'Automne', LeFigaro, 30 October 1907.

72 FeÂ lix Vallotton, `Le Salon d'Automne', LaGrande revue, vol. 44, 25 October 1907, p. 920.`trait hypnotique et chevrotant'.

73 Michel Puy, `Les Fauves', Le Phalange, vol. 2, 15November 1907, p. 457.

74 Michael Marrinan, `Picasso as an `̀ Ingres'' YoungCubist', Burlington Magazine, vol. 119,November 1977, pp. 756±63; Fleckner, DasTuÈ rkische Bad, op. cit. (note 11), also treats thiswork on his p. 13.

75 This copy was later answered by a more timidquasi-cubist reinterpretation of the Manet byJacques Villon, Drawing after Olympia (byEdouard Manet), 1912, illustrated in DanielRobbins, (ed.), Jacques Villon, Cambridge,Massachusetts, 1976, p. 54.

76 Lapauze's exhibition coincided with thepublication of his Ingres, se vie et son oeuvre(1780±1867), d'apreÁ s des documents ineÂdits, Paris,1911; see also Raymond Bouyer, Èxpositions etconcours', Bulletin de l'art ancien et moderne,no. 502, 29 April 1911, pp. 133±4; Jamot, `LeBain turc d'Ingres', op. cit. (note 28); and thelong article by Robert de la Sizeranne, `L'Oeil etla main de M. Ingres, aÁ la galerie Georges Petit',Revue des deux mondes, 6th period, vol. 81, 15May 1911, pp. 416±35.

77 Guillaume Apollinaire, `L'Exposition Ingres',L'IntransigeÂ ant, 28 April 1911, in Chroniquesd'art, pp. 219±20.

78 Guillaume Apollinaire, `L'attention exceptionnelleaccordeÂ e par la presse au cubisme prouve sonimportance', L'Intransigeant, 11 October 1911, inChroniques d'art, p. 254. `Ceux qui prennent le

cubisme pour une fumisterie se trompentcompleÁ tement. Ils font voir simplement que si lalecË on d'Ingres na pas eÂ teÂ perdue pour ces artistes,le public et avec lui beaucoup d'eÂ crivains d'art nel'ont pas du tout comprise.'

79 Henri Lapauze, `La LecË on de Ingres (1780±1867)',in Peintures et dessins des J.-A.-D. Ingres, 1780±1867, Paris, 1911, pp. 7±15; it is worth notingthat LeÂ on Bonnat lent liberally to this exhibition,and that the vast ComiteÂ Ingres (of which Bonnatwas president) reads like a Who's Who of theParisian grande monde.

80 Bouyer, Èxpositions et concours', op. cit. (note76), p. 134. `Nous sommes las de ces fauves soi-disant ingristes et de ces cubistes plus ou moinspatagons.'

81 Jacques RivieÁ re, Ìngres', Nouvelle revuefrancË aise, vol. 5, no. 30, April±June 1911,pp. 834±5. `Tout eÃ tre vivant rayonne; il permet aÁsa forme de . . . se deÂ tache incessamment de luicomme un beau fantoÃ me vite dissipeÂ ; et parchacun des ses gestes il deÂ lie de doux cerclesinvisibles . . . Le trait d'Ingres recueille partoutcette graÃ ce eÂ maneÂ ; il l'arreÃ te sitoÃ t qu'elle quitte lecorps . . . il impose son exquise limite . . . Ledessin d'Ingres est fait de quelques lignesparfaites. Autour du corps elles sont poseÂ escomme des arcs leÂ gers et de deÂ licats cerceaux . . .De la meÃ me facË on s'expliquent ces deÂ formationssi hardies et pourtant invisibles. Il faut que letrait preÂ ceÁ de partout le mouvement afin del'enfermer; il faut qu'il aille tout de suitejusqu'au bout du geste pour l'arreÃ ter . . . IldeÂ passe doucement la mesure, mais c'est pourl'imposer.'

82 AndreÂ Lhote, Ìngres vu par un peintre', Nouvellerevue francË aise, vol. 17, no. 96, September 1921,p. 274; the changed historical context for thepostwar appreciation of Ingres (and the wealth ofnew critical writing of which this is part) cannotbe treated here.

83 This and the following quotations are fromLhote, ibid., pp. 288±9. `L'artiste eÂ gyptien vaavoir recours aÁ un subterfuge: imaginer undeÂ placement de sa vision et inteÂ grer l'oeil reÂ el,l'oeil absolu, l'oeil de face dans le profil, qui endemeure tout illumineÂ .'

84 Ùn inventaire complet des beauteÂ s du corpsfeÂ minin. C'est aÁ la meÃ me totalisation des valeursexpressives que tendent les oeuvres d'Ingres preÂ -citeÂ es.'

85 `Le deÂ sir de l'absolu qui incite certains peintrescubistes aÁ noter simultaneÂ ment les proprieÂ teÂ sdiffeÂ rentes des objets, et qui leur fait concilier aÁleur tour, sur leur panneau, les signes eÂ loigneÂ sd'un sein et du dos ou la rondeur et le profild'un compotier empli des poires aÁ la fois rondes,et triangulaires!'



ingres chez les fauves

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