Cleveland Museum of Art

Madame Désiré Raoul-Rochette

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Date

1830

Medium

graphite on cream wove paper

Culture

France, 19th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

While living in Rome, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres began making commissioned graphite portraits as a way of providing additional income. He aspired to a career as a history painter, however, and made such works only as gifts for friends after achieving professional success. This sheet was a gift for its sitter's husband, a famous archaeologist to whom Ingres dedicated it at lower right. The subject of the drawing, Antoinette-Claude Houdon, was the youngest daughter of Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), an important 18th-century French sculptor. Using the style he developed for such works, the artist drew in stark, confident lines, with no apparent erasing or correction. Ingres paid close attention to his sitter's costume: a fashionable open coat and dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves.

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