The source (Ingres)
The source (original French: La source ) is the title of a painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres . It belongs to the holdings of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and is located there on the ground floor on the right wall of the aisle.
description
The painting in a narrow, tall format shows a naked young woman almost life-size as a naiad , a spring nymph . She stands in a crevice with water at her feet, in which they are reflected. On the left, two daffodils grow out of the stony ground. The figure is holding an amphora-like jug on her shoulder with her left arm , from which water flows and fills the ground in front of her. As she reaches over her head with her right arm to counterbalance the weight of the large clay jug on her left shoulder, the figure gets into an exaggerated contraposto and shows a curved body line in a pronounced swing of the hips, which is characteristic of Ingres' nudes .
The painting is carried out in a smooth, careful application of paint, as preferred, for example, by Jean-Léon Gérôme . Similar to his nude representation of the Great Odalisque, Ingres painted the naked female figure as a "passive creature" , although she looks directly at the viewer ; it seems "to be there only for enjoyment, but [appears] at the same time inaccessible" .
Origin and Effect
Dominique Ingres began work on the painting with preliminary studies during his stay in Florence in 1820; However, he did not finish the picture until 1856 in Paris, where he had the accessories and the background worked out by his two students, Paul Balze and Alexandre Desgoffe. Ingres first presented the work in his studio to a small group of his painter friends, who accepted it enthusiastically. The source later inspired numerous artists such as Seurat , Renoir , Maillol , Picasso and Magritte .
Provenance
In 1857, Count Charles Marie Tanneguy Duchâtel acquired the painting and decorated it with large plants to give it the impression of a natural representation; the Countess Duchâtel received it later. She bequeathed it to the Louvre , which took it over in 1878 and left it to the Musée d'Orsay a good 100 years later in 1986.
literature
- Rudolf Zeitler: The Unknown Century . In: Propylaen art history , Volume 11: Rudolf Zeitler (Ed.): The art of the 19th century . Propylaeen-Verlag, Berlin 1979; Pp. 15-128; on Ingres: pp. 58–63.
- Caroline Mathieu: Musée d'Orsay . Édition de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-7118-2124-2 ; P. 38f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Zeitler, The Unknown Century , p. 59
- ^ Caroline Mathieu: Musée d'Orsay , p. 39
- ↑ cf. Muthmann, Friedrich: Mother and source: studies on source veneration in ancient times and in the Middle Ages . Basel: Archäologischer Verl., 1975. (p. 441)
- ↑ According to the information from the Musée d'Orsay