Odalisque

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

1874

Jules Joseph Lefebvre (French, 1836–1912)

A luminous nude woman reclines in a dimly lit interior filled with fruits, textiles, and other luxury goods. To European audiences, this collection of objects would have broadly evoked the Middle East. The painting’s setting and title suggest that she is a courtesan in a harem. For 19th-century European artists, depicting the nude female form was a fundamental component of academic training and a benchmark of artistic excellence. The imagined harem setting—a space historically used as women’s quarters and forbidden to men—provided narrative context for the nude and appealed to the sexual and colonialist fantasies of European audiences.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jules Joseph Lefebvre
Title: Odalisque
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1874
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed upper right: Jules. LeFebvre 1874.
Dimensions: 102.4 × 200.7 cm (41 5/16 × 79 in.); Framed: 119.4 × 216.9 cm (47 × 85 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: George F. Harding Collection
Reference Number: 1983.381
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/100351/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1983–84 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1984), p. 45.
Richard R. Brettell, French Salon Artists 1800–1900 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1987), pp. 99–100 (ill.), 119.
Hollis Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 51–53, fig. 30; reprint (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013).
Stephanie Holt, “Chloe: A Curious History,” (Ph.D diss, University of Melbourne, 1992), pp. 4–6.
Stephanie Holt, “Chloe: A Curious History,” in Jeanette Hoorn, ed., Strange Women: Essays in Art and Gender (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourn University Press, 1994), pp. 118–120, pl. 20.
Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 25, fig. 2.
Shalon Detrice Parker, “A Tradition Gone Awry: The Salon Nude in Fin-de-siècle France” (Ph.D diss, University of California, Berkeley, 2003), pp. 41–3, 228, fig. 17.
Shalon Detrice Parker, “‘With a Sincere Spirit and Deep Conviction”: Lefebvre’s Lady Godiva and Salon Artistic Culture in Fin-de-Siècle France,” Southeastern College Art Conference Review 15, 4 (2009), pp. 422–23, fig. 3.
Allison Lee Palmer, Historical Dictionary of Romantic Art and Architecture (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p. 143.

Memphis, Tennessee, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Scent and Symbolism: Perfumed Objects and Images, April 9-July 2, 2017, cat 191.

Vincent Astor, New York, by 1926; sold, sale of the Astor Residence, American Art Association, New York, April 21, 1926, lot 450, to George F. Harding, Jr. [buyer according to a Harding Museum record in the George F. Harding files, Art Institute, copy in curatorial file]; George F. Harding, Jr. (died 1929), Chicago; bequeathed to the George F. Harding Museum, Chicago; transferred to the Art Institute, 1983.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.