Portraits Of Ingres And Reynolds Essays - Military Personnel

Portraits of Ingres and Reynolds The portrait. A single person immortalized forever on canvas. At first glance, you only see the subject. With a more analytical eye, though, you not only see the image but you begin to hear the voice of the painter and of his time. This is what I hope to do, to feel and understand the mind of the painter Ingres when he painted Louis-Francois Bertin and Reynolds when he painted General John Burgoyne. In the portrait of Bertin, Ingres has captured on canvas a man who has never been pampered in his life. You feel by looking at him that this is a man who has worked for everything that he has ever received in his life. Why do you feel this, though? Let's begin with the colors chosen for this piece. The colors revolve around brown, giving you the impression of something very down to earth. The background of the painting is basically one solid brown. Bertin occupies the whole bottom section of the painting, with nothing of his body going above three-fourths of the canvas. He is the ground, below even the earth tones of the background. He has on a black suit, brown vest, and white shirt, as well. These colors working together allow you to make certain assumptions about him. He looks like a working man, which he was. ?Louis-Francois Bertin (1766-1841), was one of the great leaders of the French upper middle class, a businessman and a journalist? (Rosenblum, 134). This would explain the one striking color in the piece, the red. Bertin is sitting on a red cushion, red being a color classically associated with royalty. This could be a commentary on Bertin's life on a whole. His journal, the Journal des Debats was a strong supporter of liberal journalism in a time when France, the monarchs from the self proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte to King Charles X, wanted the return of an absolute monarch in France. The people were not happy with this and Bertin's newspaper spread this displeasure. Bertin was even exiled for a period of time by Napoleon Bonaparte for his royalist views. He wanted a constitutional monarch set up. But, after the fall of Bonaparte, Bertin returned and continued his life, prospering. Monet even called this portrait ?the Buddha of bourgeoisie? (Rosenblum, 134). This portrait should be looked upon as the pinnacle image of the bourgeoisie of the time. On the other hand, there may be less of a social commentary and more of a character commentary in Reynolds' portrait of General Burgoyne. In this portrait, the color scheme of the General's body matches that of the background, especially of the battle in the lower left. By the red of his coat, you can probably tell that the General was a member of the British army in the era of the American Revolution or during the colonization of America. This color matches the color of the blood in the background. The gray complexion of the General is also like the smoke and the sky in the background, but they are different shades. The gray used for the skin of Burgoyne has a slight pink coloration. After all, this man is human. The black lining of the General's clothes also matches the color of the background people. This matching of the background and the General either tells us one of two things. This could say to us that the General is, in his body, action personified. Within him contains the heat of battle, yet he holds this turmoil nobly, as a calm and relaxed figure. Another view could be that he is completely detached from the battle. Who in their right mind would stand like that, completely clean and well groomed, in the heat of battle? He is not participating in anything around him. This is arguable from both sides by the way that the General is standing. The General is standing there engaging neither the violence that is occurring behind him nor the people that are and will be looking at his portrait. This is either a calm or collected person or an arrogant person. Maybe both. He cares nothing for anything around him. This may be a commentary on