At a very early age his father began to teach him drawing and music. He first achieved success as a violinist in the salon of the bishop, but he was at least equally precocious with his pencil. Towards the age of twelve he was taken to Toulouse. He was at first placed with the painter Vigan, and worked under his direction at the Académie Royale. Then he went to the atelier of Roques, where he made rapid progress. It was in Roques’s studio that Ingres was converted to what he called “the religion of Raphael.” Roques had brought back with him from Rome a number of copies of the works of the great painters of the Renaissance, among them one of Raphael’s “Vierge à la Chaise.” Ingres was so impressed by the beauty of this work that he is said to have burst into tears before it. The instruction at the Toulouse Academy, with its insistence on minute accuracy of drawing, also had a great influence on his future career. At the end of his life Ingres, when talking of his early studies at Toulouse, was fond of affirming that he was still “what the little Ingres of twelve years had been.” At the age of eighteen he was sent to Paris, and had the good fortune--it was his own expression--to be admitted to the studio of Louis David. He quickly gained the esteem of his master, and is said to have been employed to paint the accessories in David’s famous portrait of Madame Récamier. But their good understanding did not last long. Ingres competed for the Grand Prix de Rome in 1799, and David awarded the prize to Granger, an older pupil of his, while Ingres, to his great indignation, was only awarded the second prize. His picture was burnt during the Commune. The following year Ingres carried off the prize. The subject was “Achilles receiving in his Tent the Envoys of Agamemnon.” Flaxman, the English sculptor and illustrator of Homer, spoke so flatteringly of Ingres’ picture that, according to M. Delaborde, his master’s hostility was still further increased. This painting, which is still preserved at the École des Beaux-Arts, shows the young man’s power of vivid and accurate drawing and his respect for the teachings of his master. But under its external conformity to David’s principles it is possible to trace the germs of an originality which was soon to separate the pupil, almost in spite of himself, from the school of his master. For while David admitted the direct imitation of nature only in his portraits and studies of the nude, he insisted on giving the first place to the search for the grand style in his historical compositions.