2-734-455 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Madame Désiré Raoul-Rochette, 1830. Ingres became adept at making portrait drawings in graphite when he lived in Rome and needed the income they provided. After finally achieving public success in Paris, however, he made such works only as gifts for friends. He drew this sheet for the sitter's husband, a famous archaeologist, to whom the work is dedicated at the lower right. Ingres’s technical mastery is fully evident in this portrait, which shows no evidence of erasure or correction. Madame Raoul-Rochette, born Antoinette-Claude Houdon, was the youngest daughter of Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), one of the most important French sculptors of the 18th century. Always attentive to fashion, Ingres shows the sitter here in day-wear, sporting a redingote (a coat open down the front) and a dress with long gigot or leg-of-mutton sleeves, stylishly enormous at the top.