The Members of the Academy of Beaux-Arts Assembled to Jury the Rome Prize

This sketch records a meeting of the jury of the Rome Prize, an annual award for promising students given by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The prize included a scholarship for several years of study in Rome amid treasures of ancient and Renaissance art. The Rome Prize long represented the first important step toward developing a solid official career as a painter in France. Although most of the men sketched here are unrecognizable, the one closest to the left appears to be the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). The identification allows us to correct the date of 1843 inscribed at the bottom of the drawing, for we know that Ingres did not participate as a jury member in 1843. Instead the sketch must date to 1841 or 1842.