Ingres and Fashion

The Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban presents a previously unseen exhibition on Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's relationship with fashion. Through an exceptional selection of more than 200 works, including paintings, drawings, textiles, accessories and period documents, the itinerary highlights the master's singular attention to the depiction of fabrics, drapery and clothing, revealing how fashion shapes the gaze and artistic composition. The exhibition explores how Ingres sublimates textile material, plays with transparencies, draws on the trends of his time and engages with the history of art to give his portraits a timeless modernity.

An initiator of a singular style, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) reigned as one of the undisputed masters of the French school for more than half a century. In recent years, the current exhibition programme devoted to the painter has amply demonstrated the interest his work arouses today. A history painter, he was also recognised by his contemporaries for his exceptional talent as a portraitist, rarely combining qualities of psychological analysis with a precise attention to the finery and attire of his sitters. Thus Théophile Gautier could praise an artist who knew how to « […] bring his great taste to the service of the fashion journal » while Baudelaire, more disapproving, denounced his use of colour, which he said he employed « like a fashion saleswoman ». Through this prominent place given to contemporary costume, without ever descending into society portraiture, Ingres achieves a balance that paradoxically makes him a true « painter of modern life » – a title Baudelaire nevertheless always denied him.

Bringing together works by Ingres with a wide variety of textile pieces, accompanied by fashion accessories or jewellery, alongside caricatures, fashion engravings, technical treatises, commercial catalogues and posters, the exhibition unfolds across 6 sections: Ingres and the textile material / Transfiguring contemporary fashion / The Body, Fashion, Painting / Fashion in colours / Consuming fashion / Ingres in fashion? In conclusion, the influence of Ingres's painting on fashion designers of the 20th and 21st centuries (Castelbajac, Saint Laurent, Issey Miyake…) will be addressed.