Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (b. 1780 d. 1867)w as a French Neoclassical painter. He was greatly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. His work is rooted in the academic tradition, which revolved around the study from the nude and classical art. He became the defender of a rigid classicism which contrasted with the Romanticism of Delacroix. Ingres viewed himself as a painter of history, the goal of academic art.