James Lenox Seated

Daniel Huntington's sketch captures James Lenox, the prominent New York collector and philanthropist, in a moment of informal study. Rendered in ink with anatomical precision, the drawing demonstrates the artist's facility with portraiture and drapery—hallmarks of nineteenth-century academic practice. Huntington (1816–1906), a leading American painter, employed such studies as working drawings for larger compositions. The notations and color accents visible on the sheet suggest this served as a preparatory sketch, a standard practice among studio artists of the period who built finished works from careful observational studies.