Madame Guillaume Guillon Lethière, née Marie-Joseph-Honorée Vanzenne, and her son Lucien Lethière

Madame Guillaume Guillon Lethière, née Marie-Joseph-Honorée Vanzenne, and her son Lucien Lethière is an intimate graphite drawing created by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in 1808. This sensitive portrait was executed while Ingres was residing in Rome, where Guillaume Guillon Lethière served as the director of the French Academy. The artist’s early years in Italy, beginning in 1806, saw him establish a reputation for highly finished portrait drawings commissioned by the French expatriate community.

The work captures Madame Lethière, one of the notable women in Ingres’s early career, seated alongside her young son, Lucien. Ingres rendered this dual portrait with characteristic precision, utilizing graphite to achieve fine detail in the sitters’ clothing and facial expressions. The composition emphasizes the tender relationship between the mother and the boy, a central theme in many 19th-century portraits. Madame Lethière gazes directly at the viewer, while Lucien is positioned slightly toward her, illustrating the protective dynamic common in maternal portraits of the era.

Ingres’s mastery of line and form, hallmarks of his neoclassical style, are on full display in this relatively small-scale drawing. It is categorized as a finished drawing, serving not as a study but as an autonomous artwork requested by the sitters. This period solidified Ingres’s ability to capture sophisticated psychological depth using simple paper and graphite.

This powerful work is an exceptional example of the artist's meticulous draftsmanship and currently resides in the esteemed collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Because of its historical significance, the drawing has frequently entered the public domain, allowing institutions worldwide to study and disseminate high-quality prints of this early Roman masterwork.