Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres -French Painter

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres' portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.

Having been awarded first prize in drawing by the Académie Royale de Peinture, in August 1797 he traveled to Paris to study with Jacques-Louis David, France's—and Europe's—leading painter during the revolutionary period, in whose studio he remained for four years. Ingres followed his master's neoclassical example but revealed, according to David, "a tendency toward exaggeration in his studies." He was admitted to the Painting Department of the École des Beaux-Arts in October 1799, and won, after tying for second place in 1800, the Grand Prix de Rome in 1801 for hisAmbassadors of Agamemnon in the tent of Achilles.