Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)

Executed by Ingres during his second Roman stay, the present work is part of a group of three portrait drawings commissioned by Johann Gotthard Reinhold (1771-1838), Dutch Ambassador to Rome from 1814 to 1827. The series includes an 1816 portrait of the Ambassador's sister (Frankfurt, Städel Museum; Naef, op. cit., vol. 4, no. 185, ill.), his wife, Sophie Amalie Reinhold (née Ritter), with their children (New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Thaw Collection; op. cit., no. 149, ill., and Tonkovich, op. cit., 2017, no. 202, ill.), and the present one, featuring his sister-in-law, Louise Sophia Henrietta Catharina Ritter (b. 1781), seen in half length. Following his signature technique, Ingres finely rendered the sitter's face with delicate lines in graphite and sketched the rest of the body and the gown in a less finished manner. Together with the above-mentioned portrait of Sophie Amalie Reinhold, the present work entered the Rockefeller collections in 1931, when it was purchased by Abby Aldrich from New York dealer Martin Birnbaum (op. cit., 1960, p. 188).