Attributed to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

G. Morssen, Paris

Paper rather browned. Top right corner missing. Tears in upper and lower left corners. The remaining three corners backed with tabs of paper. A few minor spots. Framed.
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This study is close to a group of drawings executed by Ingres in the 1790s, when the young artist was training first at the Académie Royale, Toulouse, and then in Paris.  The drawings, executed in black chalk with stumping, are almost all copies after the antique, taken from plaster casts of famous figure groups to which he would have had access at the Academy and elsewhere.  As such, the sheets are an important record of the artist's early formation, and reveal a sophisticated response to the strict academic conventions of the time.  For further information, see P. Hattis, Ingres' Sculptural Style: a group of unknown drawings, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum, 1973