A decorative odalisque inspired by Louise-Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

In^18th-centuryFrance, Galland’s translation of *The Thousand and One Nights* (1704–1717) and Montesquieu’s *Persian Letters* ( 1721), further fuelled curiosity about the Orient, whose sensuality is captured in the depictions of sultanas by François Boucher (1703–1770) and Amédée van Loo (1719–1795). Rameau’s ballet, *Les Indes Galantes*, premiered in 1735, sustained this taste whilst offering a more spectacular embodiment. Turkish costume served to heighten the erotic aura of women in power and launched a fashion trend destined for a brilliant future.

Portraits of women in oriental dress became particularly fashionable in the second half of the^18th century, replacing the traditional cross-dressing as ‘Flora’ or ‘Diana’. Louis-Michel van Loo (1707–1771) thus painted numerous portraits of women as sultanas, some of whose identities remain unknown, as in the case of the portrait dated 1758 held at the Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens. Other portraits, by contrast, are clearly identifiable, such as those of Mademoiselle Sallé or the Marquise de Marigny, both by the same Louis-Michel. The van Loos were not the only ones to contribute to this trend: the painter Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766) produced a portrait of Mademoiselle de Clermont as a sultana as early as 1748 (now in the Wallace Collection in London), as did Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734–1781), right up to the exquisite portrait of Mademoiselle Guimard in Turkish dress painted by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) in the 1790s, now in the Los Angeles County Museum. Particular attention should be paid to the portrait of the Countess of Clermont-Tonnerre as a sultana ( 1785) painted by Louise-Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) and held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as Aulteribe’s painting appears to draw heavily on the pose of the latter: the left arm resting on a dark green cushion allows the upper body to tilt, whilst the face, viewed in three-quarter profile, is lost in the distance. The cloak and the sash are almost identical, whilst the yellow dress with iridescent vertical stripes is very similar.

In the painting housed at Aulteribe Castle, the intended effect is clearly very distinct from the fantasy portraits mentioned earlier, in that the atmosphere evoked is far more erotic, with a bare breast, which transforms the pose of Louise-Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s portrait: it becomes very explicitly lascivious. The similarities between the two paintings are numerous and suggest the possibility that the artist was a follower of Vigée Le Brun, who may have drawn inspiration from the latter to create, either a lascivious portrait of a woman intended as a gift for her lover – of which there are frequent examples in the^{18th century} – or a portrait intended for decorative purposes.