Louise Sophia Enrietta Catharina Ritter (Fräulein Ritter)

Details

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)
Louise Sophia Enrietta Catharina Ritter (Fräulein Ritter)
with signature and date 'Ingres. / .fec. rome. / 1817.' (lower left)
graphite and pink chalk
8¾ x 6½ in. (22.2 x 16.7 cm)

Provenance

Johann Gotthard Reinhold, Hamburg, (1838).
His widow, Minna Ritter, Hamburg, (1846).
Their daughter, Louis Köster (née Marie Reinhold), Hamburg, (1783).
Louis Koster, (1880).
With Martin Birnbaum, New York;
acquired by Mrs. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 8 August 1931.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Winthrop Rockefeller.
David Rockefeller, New York, 1 June 1974.

Literature

H. Naef, "Zwei unveröffentlichte Ingres-Zeichnungen," Schweizer Monatshefte, March 1956, pp. 649-654.
H. Naef, "Zwei Ingres-Zeichnungen," Rheinischer Merkur, vol. XIII, October 1956, p. 8.
H. Naef, "Ein unveröffentlichtes Meisterwerk im Städelschen Kunstinstitut," Die Welkunst,, 15 February 1958, p. 9.
M. Birnbaum, The Last Romantic: The Story of More Than a Half-Century in the World of Art, New York, 1960, p. 188.
H. Naef, "L'Exposition Ingres du Musée Fogg," Bulletin du Musée Ingres, vol. XXI, July 1967, p. 6, fig. 1.
A. Mongan, "Ingres as a Great Portrait Draughtsman," Colloque Ingres (Montauban, 1967), Montauban, 1969, pp. 144, 153, fig. 18.
H. Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, Bern, 1977, vol. 1, p. 498, vol. 4, p. 274, no. 200, (illustrated).
M. Potter et al., The David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection: European Works of Art, New York, 1984, vol. I, p. 102, no. 16, (illustrated).
H. Naef, in G. Tinterow and P. Conisbee, eds., Portraits by Ingres: Images of an Epoch, exh. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, p. 88, under no. 56.
C. Dufour Denison, in The Thaw Collection: Master Drawings and Oil Sketches. Acquisition Since 1994, New York, 2002, p. 74, under no. 34.
J. Tonkovich, "Revolutionary Artists," in Drawn to Greatness. Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection, ed. by J. Tonkovich, exh. cat., New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, 2017, p. 111.

Exhibited

New York, New School for Social Research, Drawings of the Past and Present Times, 14 November - 9 December 1933 (without catalogue).
Fort Smith, Fort Smith Art Center, Collectors Show, 1966 (without catalogue).
Cambridge (MA), Fogg Art Museum, Ingres Centennial Exhibition: Drawings, Watercolors and Oil Sketches from American Collections, 12 February - 9 April 1967, no. 43 (catalogue by A. Mongan and H. Naef).

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Lot Essay

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).

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