Odalisque à l'esclave

Ingres painted this in 1842, while French troops were pushing deeper into Algeria, a conquest begun 12 years earlier. He never set foot in the East. The harem scene, with its reclining nude, a lute-playing attendant, and a eunuch watching from a shadowed doorway, was assembled in a Paris studio from engravings and travellers' tales. It is the second version he made. The first, from about 1840, went to a collector in Cambridge, and Ingres painted this repetition for a French diplomat, tuning the setting with a deeper architectural background and a garden beyond. The enamel-smooth finish and the impossible, boneless curve of the woman's back were the things he cared about, far more than any real place.