Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) was the most important French painter in the neoclassic tradition during the first half of the 19th century and one of the most distinguished draftsmen in the entire history of art.

The first half of the 19th century witnessed a profound shift in the course of Western art, which was dominated largely by French painting. It was a period of transition: new attitudes about painting were pervasive, many of which represented a break with the tradition of Renaissance illusionism and were harbingers of the modern painting forged by Édouard Manet and the impressionists. These new attitudes were present in both neoclassicism and romanticism, the two dominant styles of French painting between 1780 and 1850.

The art of J. A. D. Ingres must be seen within this complex situation: as a student of Jacques Louis David, the first of the neoclassicists, Ingres fashioned himself as...