Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan

In the summer of 1788 three ambassadors from the south Indian kingdom of Mysore arrived in Paris. Their ruler, Tipu Sultan, had sent them to ask Louis XVI for help driving the British out of India, and for a season the envoys were the talk of the city. Vigee Le Brun, the queen's favourite portraitist, painted the chief of them, Muhammad Dervish Khan, nearly life-size and full-length, one hand resting on his sword against an open sky. The Salon showed the picture in 1789. By then the embassy had failed, the ambassadors had sailed home, and France itself was a few months from revolution. In 2019 the painting sold for more than seven million dollars, a record at auction for any woman artist of her century.