Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière

Ingres's Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière of 1806, part of the Rivière family suite exhibited at the 1806 Salon, depicts the young daughter of the Rivière family in a landscape setting of ideal pastoral character. The girl's age and her setting gave Ingres latitude for a more imaginative composition than the formal adult portraits, and he created one of his most enchanting images — the child's fresh face and white dress against a soft landscape background suggesting the innocence that his more austere adult portraits deliberately avoided. The girl died young, giving the portrait the additional weight of memorial.

Ingres sets the delicate figure against a soft landscape unusual in his oeuvre, creating an almost Leonardesque atmosphere. The precise rendering of the white gloves and dress against the darker background reveals his extraordinary sensitivity to tonal relationships.