Families who lived in France during the Napoleonic era made strong and resilient homes in their country. Their homes were built, not of bricks and mortar, but of caring and love. This is evident in the skillful portrait sketches of Jean August Dominque Ingres (1780–1867) who presented the prosperous and loving middle-class families of this time.
Parent and Child
In many of his drawings, Ingres showed the strong bond of parent and child through their expressions. When he prepared to sketch, Ingres carefully observed the face of each sitter. He once said, “To really succeed in a portrait, first of all one has to be imbued with the face one wants to paint, to reflect on it for a long time, attentively, from all sides, and even to devote the first sitting to this.”…