Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

The Violinist Niccolò Paganini

borrowed from wga.hu

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Ingres at the Morgan | Thaw Conservation Center - to see close ups

 

Ingre, who was a French academic painter, is considered, by some, to be the best pencil draftsmen of all time.

An academic painter first creates a preparatory drawing to obtain necessary information for a proposed painting. 

Here, Ingre takes extra time to familiarize himself with the typography of the sitter's face by creating a tightly modeled rendering of the head.The delicate modeling of the face is in contrast to the gestural handling of the rest of the figure. Thus, Ingre has controlled the viewer’s eye movement across a composition by the degree of rendering of a particular element.

  The Violinist shows how a preparatory drawing helps the artist plan the overall composition ( the gesture, the arrangement of half tones, highlights and shadow, etc.) as well as study the forms of the attire and anatomical features of the sitter prior to paint on canvas.

From Wikipedia

 

Self-portrait at age 24, 1804 (revised c. 1850),

 oil on canvas, 78 x 61 cm, Musée Condé

 Born: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
29 August 1780
Montauban, Languedoc, France

Died: 14 January 1867 (aged 86)
Paris, France