A very rare lithograph. After having spent 18 years in Italy, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres came back to France in 1824. His goal was to use lithography to widely spread his works. Ingres felt that his Grande Odalisque – painted in Rome in 1814 (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and first shown at the Parisian Salon of 1819 – was a good choice among his works to reproduce: the subject was both so-called erotic and exotic. These two features were highly appreciated under the reign of Charles X, and indeed the painting remains still today one of the key works at the Louvre.
Perhaps the greatest draughtsman of his era, Ingres made only few original prints: eight lithographs and one etching. The actual lithography was created in 1825 and presents the painting with a right to left inversion. It was published in 1826 by François Séraphin Delpech in his Album lithographique.
