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PORTRAIT OF A LADY signed and dated 1834 twice, one indistinctly, the other in a later hand, indistinctly inscribed, and stamped (L. 1714); also stamped (L. 657), verso graphite on white wove paper 12 \af11/16\ by 9 3/8 in. 32.2 by 23.8 cm. Portrait of a Lady is dated 1834, the year before Ingres returned to Rome to begin a six year term as Director of the French Academie. It was also the year he completed the enormous Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien painted to replace Fra Bartolomeo's altarpiece confiscated during the Revolution from the Cathedral in Autun. (Ingres" painting was shown first at the Salon of 1834 to great critical disparagement.) The present drawing, however, relates most closely to Ingres" 1835 Portrait of Mlle. Louise Vernet, another pencil drawing of almost the same size in the Ian Woodner Family Collection (see G. Goldner, Master Drawings from the Woodner Collection, 1983, No. 62, ill.). In both, the face is conceived in abstract, geometric terms, almost unnaturally symmetrical and, in both, the viewer is drawn first to the sitters" direct but distinctly feminine gaze. The pure line and austere form of the face in the two portraits is crowned by strictly restrained, formalized coiffures a la mode. In the present drawing, the cone- like hair decorations above each ear are balanced by a plaited braid coil atop the center of her head. This formality of hair and features is distinctly contrasted with the exuberant linearity of the elaborate costume, freer even in the Portrait of a Lady than in the Portrait of Louise Vernet. (The hands of Mlle. Vernet, however, seem to flow indistinctly into the uninterrupted lines of her sleeves while those in the present drawing define themselves by opposition to the vitality of broken lines by which the dress is depicted.) The slightly oblique placement of the figure on the sheet and its superb condition make Portait of a Lady particularly appealing. Although the sitter in the present drawing by Ingres is unknown, it was either commissioned by the sitter or given by the artist to a friend; other drawings remained in the studio as part of the vast mass of reference material for himself and his students which (with few exceptions) were bequeathed to his hometown of Montauban (and are now in the Musee Ingres). In any case, the first known owner of the drawing was the artist Leon Bonnat (1834-1923) who continued Ingres" highly finished, elegantly stylized portraiture into a slightly debased, detached realism which set the academic fashion through to the end of the century. At some point, the drawing then passed into the collection of Edgar Degas (who owned more than several paintings by Ingres including the great portraits of M. and Mme. LeBlanc in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in addition to many drawings). Degas was very close to Bonnat in the 1850s and 1860s; they had met as students at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and continued their friendship while studying in Italy. After their return to France, Degas painted Bonnat's portrait (Lemoine 150, in a private collection, Paris and Lemoine 111 in the Musee Bonnat, Bayonnne). It is not impossible that Degas acquired the drawing directly from Bonnat either through gift or purchase. Decades after Degas and Bonnat had become estranged, Julie Manet (niece of the great painter and for whom Degas played matchmaker- she later married the artist's friend Ernst Rouart) recorded in her journal a description of Degas' apartment in the rue Victor Masse in Paris; "His dining room is hung with yellow handkerchiefs, and on top of them are drawings by Ingres." Portait of a Lady must have been amongst these drawings; it was finally dispersed along with the rest of Degas" collection a year after his death in 1917. Provenance: Leon Bonnat Edgar Degas (sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, March 26-27, 1918, Lot 205, illustrated) Mme. de Lassigneul (sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, May 28-29, 1925, Lot 27, illustrated) Galerie Jacques Seligman, Paris and New York Cesar de Hauke as agent for Thomas N. Metcalfe, Boston (acquired from the previous owner in 1926) Elizabeth Paine Metcalfe (his widow) Elizabeth Paine Card, Boston Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited: French Painting of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1929, p. 31, No. 84, Pl. 11 Ingres Centennial Exhibition, Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., February 12-April 9, 1967, No. 72 (entry by Agnes Mongan) Literature: Morton D. Zabel, "Ingres in America", The Arts, New York, February 1930, p. 382 (Mme. Balze) Hans Naef, "L'exposition Ingres du Musee Fogg", Bulletin du Musee Ingres, July 1967, p.6, No. 1 Hans Naef, Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, Vol. V, Bern, 1980, p. 182-4, No. 346 illustrated.