Odalisque in Grisaille

This is an unfinished repetition, reduced in size and much simplified, of the celebrated Grande Odalisque of 1814 (Musée du Louvre, Paris), an imagined concubine in a Middle Eastern harem. The painting was central to Ingres's conception of ideal beauty, and its influence was bolstered by his longevity: Ingres continued to paint nudes like this one as late as the 1860s, by which time he had trained hundreds of followers. Paintings in shades of gray-en grisaille-were often made to establish variations in tone as a guide to engravers of black and white reproductive prints, but the intended purpose of this work remains uncertain.

Credit: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1938