Sketch for Madame Moitessier

The Sketch for Madame Moitessier by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres is a preparatory drawing executed in graphite on wove paper. Although Ingres is primarily renowned for his monumental Neoclassical paintings, his extensive corpus of drawings provides critical insight into his working method and commitment to formal precision. This important study, classified culturally as French and spanning the crucial transitional period of 1776 to 1800, exemplifies the artist’s early focus on rigorous draftsmanship, foundational to his entire career.

This drawing is connected to the celebrated commissions Ingres undertook decades later, which resulted in his iconic portraits of Marie Clotilde-Inès de Foucauld, Madame Moitessier. Ingres was known for his painstaking and lengthy process, often spending years refining preliminary drawings to perfect a pose, the fall of drapery, and the psychological expression of his sitter before transferring the design to the final canvas. This piece, rendered meticulously in graphite, demonstrates Ingres’s rigorous attention to line and volume, emphasizing classical geometry over illusionistic space, a defining characteristic of his Neoclassical aesthetic.

Ingres’s drawings are highly valued for their exceptional clarity and technical virtuosity, offering a detailed perspective into the foundational stages of his finished works. The artist consistently prioritized purity of form and contour, a quality immediately evident in this refined graphite study. The work serves as a powerful demonstration of the principles of academic draftsmanship prevalent in the French artistic tradition. This specific study is maintained within the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. Due to the masterwork status of Ingres's output and its historical significance, high-quality prints derived from the original artwork are frequently available through public domain resources, ensuring broad access to the genius of this 19th-century master.