Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière

When Ingres painted this in 1806, he was 26 and Caroline Rivière was 15, the daughter of an official in Napoleon's new imperial court. Her father commissioned the young painter to portray the whole family that year, and this is the last of the three. She stands against a cool river landscape in a white dress, her skin given the smooth enamel finish Ingres loved. Caroline died later the same year, not long after sitting for it, so the portrait is the only grown likeness of her that exists. Critics at the Salon of 1806 disliked it, calling the hard clean line old-fashioned, too close to the early Flemish painters. Notice the long fur stole looped over her arms, painted with the same patience as her face, holding her still in a pose she would not keep for long.