The Walters Art Museum

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Odalisque with Slave

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867)

Jean-Paul Flandrin (French, 1811-1902)

1842

oil on canvas

29 15/16 x 41 5/16 in. (76 x 105 cm)

Description
An odalisque (female member of a harem) reclines exposed in the harem listening to a servant's lute music. This painting was commissioned by King Wilhelm I of Württemberg and was executed by Ingres with the assistance of his pupil Paul Flandrin. A version of this subject painted three years earlier shows the odalisque in an enclosed room rather than with the garden vista in the background (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts). This exotic composition, which was inspired by a passage from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letters (1763), may have been conceived by Ingres in response to his rival Eugène Delacroix's success as a painter of Near Eastern subjects.
Additional Information

Acquired by Henry Walters, 1925

37.887

Centre Street: Fourth Floor: Neoclassicism & Romanticism

[Signature] Lower left: J.Ingres; [Date] Lower left: 1842


Provenance

Wilhelm I, King of Wurtemberg, 1842, by commission; Delessert [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Baron Gustave de Rothschild, [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Sir Phillip Sassoon, London [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Wildenstein and Co., New York [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1925, by purchase [with encouragement of Bryson Burroughs, Wildenstein & Co.]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

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