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.