This is my collection of writings for the three hundred and sixty five day writing challenge - where one has to write something daily, every day, for one whole year, based on the prompts provided - as part of an exercise to improve creative writing...
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Why this?
Well, it is because I had chance across this picture in another site I used to frequent and we had quite a few lively discussions regarding this specific painting and I did learn a bit about the painter too.
Firstly the colours - the richness of the gown is captured so well, despite being a dark grey blue silk, the lustre shows through the painting, the shades and the shadows are indeed poetry on canvas. The attention to detail, as regarding the inanimate objects; the flower vase, the opera tickets, the opera glasses, her minimal jewellery, the other furniture items, are in perfect proportion and symmetry.
Despite, Ingress known contempt for colour (in his own words "Colour adds ornament to a painting; but it is nothing but the handmaiden, because all it does is to render more agreeable the true perfections of the art. Rubens and Van Dyck can be pleasing at first sight, but they are deceptive; they are from the poor school of colourists, the school of deception. Never use bright colours, they are anti-historic. It is better to fall into gray than to into bright colours.") one cannot but notice the colours.
Go back, look at it, it looks like digital photography rather an a painstakingly executed painting, one that took almost three years to finish. However, it could be mentioned that the painter (whose self portrait is in the banner above) was not too pleased with the painting.
The critics are not too happy either, though for different reasons - one which is not too apparent and one which is quite visible.
The first complaint was the rendition of her right arm, for it is disproportionately long and seems to be extending from her chest rather than her shoulder. (I did not notice it, so lost I was in the colours). It does appear so only after reading the critics.
The second, which even we can notice is the reflection, it is somewhat off. The angle of the neck as well as the positioning of the fingers in the mirror cannot be an accurate reflection of the frontal view, her fingers are below her chin and not not extend beyond her jawline, so there is no way the fingers would be visible in the mirror.
When I searched for other paintings by him, I chanced on another one (equally beautiful, the pink is enough to die for), posted below:
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If you look carefully, the hand positioning of Betty would be a perfect for the reflection of previous painting. I think that maybe Ingress had this painting in mind when he did the other, which could be possible as he was commissioned for this painting in 1841, though he finally completed it only in 1848.
Interesting Trivia (~Source: Wikipedia~)
Ingres's well-known passion for playing the violin gave rise to a common expression in the French language, "violon d'Ingres", meaning a second skill beyond the one by which a person is mainly known.
Ingres was an amateur violin player from his youth, and played for a time as second violinist for the orchestra of Toulouse. When he was Director of the French Academy in Rome, he played frequently with the music students and guest artists. Charles Gounod, who was a student under Ingres at the Academy, merely noted that "he was not a professional, even less a virtuoso". Along with the student musicians, he performed Beethoven string quartets with Niccolò Paganini. In an 1839 letter, Franz Liszt described his playing as "charming", and planned to play through all the Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas with Ingres. Liszt also dedicated his transcriptions of the 5th and 6th symphonies of Beethoven to Ingres on their original publication in 1840.
The American avant-garde artist Man Ray used this expression as the title of a famous photograph portraying Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) in the pose of the Valpinçon Bather.
