Sketch of Seated Woman for National Academy of Design Tympanum

Daniel Huntington's preparatory drawing captures a classical female figure in flowing drapery, executed with confident ink lines over graphite. The sketch demonstrates the working method of academic painters in the 1880s—rapid compositional studies that preceded monumental public commissions. Huntington, a prominent American history painter and president of the National Academy of Design, developed this study for architectural decoration, where neoclassical female personifications remained standard iconography. The loose hatching and anatomical notation reveal the artist's training in academic figure drawing, a discipline central to American art education of the period.