Madame Désiré Raoul-Rochette (1830): Art, History and Details

Madame Désiré Raoul-Rochette (1830) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Madame Désiré Raoul-Rochette
• Date: 1830
• Creator attribution: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: graphite on cream wove paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 32.2 x 24 cm (12 11/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1927.437

A detail from the museum

Ingres paid close attention to his sitter's costume: a fashionable open coat and dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue des tableaux études peintes, dessins, et croquis de J.-A.-D. Ingres [. . .] exposés dans les galeries du Palais de l’École Impériale des Beaux-Arts. Paris: Ad. Lainé et J. Havard, 1867.
• Blanc, Charles. Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages. Paris: Jules Renouard, 1870.
• Delaborde, Henri. Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine. Paris: Henri Plon, 1870.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.