Why did Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse admire Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s art?

Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse admired Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres because his work served as a vital touchstone for the early 20th-century avant-garde.1

While Ingres was traditionally viewed as a proponent of Neoclassical painting, modern masters recognized that his work contained elements that anticipated the formal experiments of modern art. Specifically, Picasso and Matisse were drawn to the following aspects of his oeuvre:21

• Linear Lyricism: The distinct, elegant quality of his line work.1
• Formal Adventurousness: His willingness to employ spatial and anatomical distortions, which broke from strict realism and provided a foundation for modern stylistic exploration.21

These qualities were so influential that Ingres’s compositions, such as his harem scenes, directly informed the structural development of landmark works like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. By the early 20th century, these artists helped reframe Ingres not merely as a conservative historical figure, but as a foundational master whose technical risks paved the way for their own revolutionary movements.31