Prix de Rome Laureates
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Premier Grand Prix de Rome in painting, 1801
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres wins the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in painting, 1801, and becomes a resident of the French Academy in Rome.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) won the Prix de Rome for painting in 1801 with “Achilles Receiving the Envoys of Agamemnon”. For lack of funds he only reached Rome in 1806, and would stay nearly fourteen years, far beyond his fellowship.
An uncompromising guardian of drawing and line, he painted portraits and nudes in Rome and Florence — “La Grande Odalisque”, “The Source” — that made him the standard-bearer of the classical tradition against Delacroix’s romanticism.
From 1835 to 1840 he returned to the Villa Medici as director of the French Academy, leaving a lasting mark. His works are in the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban.