Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter whose devotion to Raphael and pure draftsmanship made him the staunch guardian of classical academic orthodoxy against the emotional colorism of Eugène Delacroix. Trained under Jacques-Louis David, Ingres famously declared that 'drawing is the probity of art.'

Despite his academic allegiance, Ingres's sensual female nudes—such as La Grande Odalisque (1814) and The Turkish Bath (1862)—exhibited daring anatomical distortions, elongated spines, and sinuous serpentine lines that prefigured Modernism, profoundly inspiring Degas, Matisse, and Picasso.