Odalisque

This canvas is barely 24 centimetres high, about the size of a book page. Pictures this small went to private collectors rather than the walls of the Salon, and in the Paris of 1838 the odalisque, a reclining woman from an imagined Turkish harem, was a subject such collectors were eager for. Delacroix gives her gold bracelets and a band of gold in her hair, lays her on dark cloth and an animal skin, and hangs a green shawl on the wall behind. She looks toward us while the light falls across her shoulders and back. The paint is quick and thick in the fur and in the red cushions at the front. On the canvas is the stamp of Haro, the Paris colour merchant who sold Delacroix his paints and canvases.