Female Nude, Study for Portrait of Mrs. Henry Schieffelin

This ink study by Daniel Huntington demonstrates the academic practice of working from the live model before completing a commissioned portrait. The confident line work captures anatomical structure and pose, with hatching used selectively to suggest volume in the torso and legs. Huntington, a prominent American painter trained in the neoclassical tradition, relied on such studies to establish formal relationships and gestural grace in his finished society portraits. The sheet's worn appearance reflects its working status—a preliminary exploration rather than a presentation drawing, revealing the deliberate process behind nineteenth-century portraiture.