La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1814)

Catalogue Title, Attribution and Date

The catalogue entry identifies this object under the title 'La grande odalisque' (Grande Odalisque), attributed to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and dated 1814. That date is the date of the work's making, and the catalogue framework keeps it distinct from later dates that accrue to the object through photography, reproduction and description. The subject is classified as a painting in the genre of nude, and the depicted person is recorded as an unidentified woman rather than a named sitter. Within the file that constitutes the digital record, the painting is described as a digital representation of the work 'Grande Odalisque' and as the main subject of the file, a formulation that distinguishes the physical panel of canvas from its electronic surrogate.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The painting is titled 'La grande odalisque' (Grande Odalisque) and was created by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1814.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The object type is painting, and the genre is nude. The depicted person is an unidentified woman.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The painting is a digital representation of the work 'Grande Odalisque' and is the main subject of the file.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Creation and collection

The Grande Odalisque is an oil painting on canvas made in France, associated with the Romanticism movement. Its creation is dated to 1814 and credited to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and the work is now in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Department of Paintings, with accession number RF 1158, currently located in Room 702. The canvas measures 91 cm in height and 162 cm in width, an unusually wide format for a single reclining figure; the object type is painting and the genre is nude, and the depicted person is an unidentified woman rather than a named sitter. Within the larger history of nineteenth-century art, these basic physical and institutional facts place the picture at the transition between the idealized nude traditions of earlier European painting and the Romantic interest in distant or imagined settings, and they establish the terms on which any further interpretation of its subject must proceed.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The figure and its construction

The imagery itself is organized around a reclining woman described as an odalisque, a woman in a harem, who is the whole subject of the picture. Her body is turned away from the viewer while her head turns back over her shoulder to look outward, and the line of her body runs nearly the full width of the canvas, from the pale soles of her feet at one side to her face at the other. Her back arches, her hip curves, and her elbow rests on a cushion; a curtain hangs across the far side and a low divan lies beneath her. Cool, even light falls across her skin without deep shadow, keeping the shapes smooth and clear, and the turn of the head at an angle to the body is the pivot around which the composition is built, since the body faces one way and the gaze another. The sources identify the figure as an odalisque and place her in that role, presenting her body as an object to be looked at while her head turns back toward the viewer; they do not tell us what Ingres intended by that turn, so the effect remains a matter of reading rather than documented intention.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Subject, showing and reproduction

Because the depicted person is an unidentified woman and not a portrait of anyone we can name, the picture is about a type of figure rather than a particular sitter, and the word odalisque does the work of naming a role, not a person. Romantic painting often looked to distant or imagined places for its subjects, and an odalisque belongs to that kind of imagining, a figure of a harem rather than an identified individual. The painting was shown publicly twice: at the Salon of 1819 and again at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, meaning audiences saw it both shortly after it was made and decades later. What the available sources establish is the subject, the date and place of creation, the medium, the attribution, the dimensions and the two exhibitions; questions about the figure's glance and its effect are left for viewers to weigh. Separately, the Wikimedia Commons file that supplies the digital image is credited to the photographer Shonagon, dated 15 March 2025, under a public domain license, a record of the reproduction rather than of the painting's own history.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The painting is associated with the Romanticism movement.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The place of creation is France.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Documented support and format

The supplied documentation establishes the material basis of the work in direct terms. The medium is oil on canvas, and the work measures 91 centimetres in height and 162 centimetres in width, a markedly horizontal format whose proportions correspond to a figure disposed at length across the surface. The evidence does not record the canvas weave, the ground or preparation layers, the pigments, the oils or media employed, or any technical examination, sampling, conservation record or analysis of the support. Statements about material and technique therefore rest on the documented medium and dimensions rather than on reports of physical investigation.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Interpretation

The distinction between what is documented and what is inferred belongs at the centre of this account. The medium, the dimensions, the 1814 date, the attribution to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the identification of the depicted person as an unidentified woman, and the genre of nude are supplied as documented facts through the Wikimedia Commons record, which itself derives from a digital photographic representation of the painting credited to Shonagon and dated 15 March 2025 under a public domain licence. That photographic provenance matters for technique: the evidence supporting statements about surface, light and finish is a reproduction, not direct examination of the object. Descriptions of how paint is handled, how forms are modelled or how the surface reads must consequently be treated as visual inference from a reproduction, while the medium and measurements stand as documented properties of the work itself.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The medium is oil on canvas.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The dimensions are 91 cm in height and 162 cm in width.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Documented Provenance

The provenance record supplied for this object is unusually narrow, and it is best to say so plainly rather than to imply more documentation than exists. The only evidence unit filed under provenance concerns a photograph rather than the painting itself: the Wikimedia Commons file that carries the image is credited to Shonagon and dated 15 March 2025, and it is released under a public domain license. That entry documents the digital surrogate and its licensing, not a chain of owners. No owner before or after the museum, no sale, no bequest and no intermediate transfer is established by the evidence available here. The distinction matters for the section as a whole, because an unrecorded interval in a provenance history is not the same thing as a proven change of ownership, and nothing in these units should be read as filling that gap.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Interpretation

Read as a whole, the surviving record is a set of fixed coordinates rather than a narrative of possession: a photograph dated 15 March 2025 and licensed as public domain, a Louvre accession number and room, an 1814 date and French origin, and two exhibition appearances in 1819 and 1855. The accession number and the current location are the strongest institutional anchors, since they identify the work within the collection that now holds it. The photograph is the most recent documented act in the file, and it concerns reproduction rather than custody. Between the object's making and its present home, the evidence simply stops, and a responsible account says so. Where the record is silent, nothing should be inferred from silence, and no owner, dealer, gift or purchase should be supplied to bridge the gap.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The Wikimedia Commons file credits the photograph to Shonagon, dated 15 March 2025, under a public domain license.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The Documented Exhibition Record

The exhibition record for Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's Grande Odalisque is unusually compact: the sources consulted establish precisely two public showings of the painting, at the Salon of 1819 and at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Both venues are given as documented facts rather than inferences, and no other exhibition, loan, or display is recorded in the evidence available here. The painting itself is dated 1814 and made in France, so the 1819 Salon followed its creation by about five years, while the 1855 Exposition Universelle came roughly four decades after it was painted. That spacing matters for how the object's public life is understood: audiences encountered the work once in the context of the post-Napoleonic Salon and again in the very different institutional setting of a mid nineteenth century universal exposition, where the history of French painting was being presented in a national and international frame rather than a biennial juried showing. The evidence supports the bare fact of both showings; it does not record what was displayed alongside the painting at either venue, how it was hung, or how either audience responded.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Exhibition history should be kept distinct from current display. The painting is now in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Department of Paintings, under accession number RF 1158, and is reported as currently located in Room 702. This is a present day location statement, not an exhibition: the evidence does not describe an exhibition title, dates, or a catalogue for the Room 702 display, and it should not be folded into the 1819 and 1855 record. The same source gives the work's physical and descriptive data: oil on canvas, 91 cm in height by 162 cm in width, object type painting, genre nude, the depicted person an unidentified woman, and the work associated with the Romanticism movement. Keeping the accession and room information separate from the exhibition chronology prevents a storage or permanent collection location from being misread as a curated exhibition, and it also anchors the object materially: the wide, low proportions implied by 91 by 162 cm are the physical terms in which any display of the canvas, at the Salon, at the 1855 Exposition Universelle, or in Room 702, would have to be arranged.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The documented dates and dimensions give the exhibition account its historical shape without overreach. Made in France in 1814, the painting entered the Salon of 1819, the official exhibition through which the French state and its juries presented new work to a broad public. Its reappearance at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 places the same canvas within a retrospective, national display culture that gathered French achievement for an international audience. The evidence establishes the two events and the work's authorship, title, medium and measurements; it does not supply catalogue numbers, page references, plates, installation details, or critical commentary from either occasion. Those gaps are part of the record as it stands and should not be filled by assumption. What can be said is that the object's public history, as documented here, consists of two widely separated moments of display, bracketed by a permanent collection life at the Louvre under RF 1158 in the present.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1819 and at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The Grande Odalisque in the Louvre

La grande odalisque by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres is today in the collection of the Louvre Museum, in the Department of Paintings, where it carries accession number RF 1158 and is currently located in Room 702. Those three details, the collection, the department and the room, fix the object in a single institutional setting, while the accession number is the identifier the museum uses for it. The work itself is an oil on canvas, 91 cm in height and 162 cm in width. The breadth of the canvas is what makes the reclining figure's extension across the picture possible, and it is part of the physical object as documented rather than a matter of interpretation.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The Wikimedia Commons file that supplies these collection details credits its photograph to Shonagon and dates that photograph 15 March 2025, under a public domain license. That date belongs to the reproduction, not to the painting. The same file describes itself as a digital representation of the work Grande Odalisque and as the main subject of the file, so the image circulating online is a photograph of a painting, not the painting itself. Distinguishing the two matters because the digital file is what many viewers will encounter first, while the accession number RF 1158 refers to the physical canvas in Room 702. The record also connects the picture to the Romanticism movement, an association made by the source rather than a form of documentation in the museum's cataloguing sense.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The painting is in the collection of the Louvre Museum, Department of Paintings, with accession number RF 1158, currently located in Room 702.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Working Insurance Calculation

Interpretation

The only monetary figure in the supplied evidence is expressly a working calculation rather than a record of value. It gives a range of US$80 million to US$150 million, recorded as a working calculation generated on 2026-10-16. The stated methodology derives this conservative band from the confirmed identification of the painting, its established place as a canonical French Romantic masterpiece, its large scale, the prominence of the artist, and its permanent museum collection status, used as the primary context anchors. Because the work is institutional and not on the open market, no public sale or auction record exists, and no directly comparable public transactions are available to anchor the figure; the band is described as intentionally broad to reflect uncertainty as well as the non-market status of the object.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

The qualifications attached to that figure are as consequential as the figure itself. The valuation paper states plainly that the range is a model-generated working insurance range for manual review only, not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result or sale price, and that it does not reflect access to private insurance records or any actual market transaction. It further notes that actual insurance values for institutional collections require qualified professional appraisal and specific policy review. The figure therefore has a procedural status only: it is a provisional, review-bound calculation whose own documentation disclaims the evidentiary weight of a valuation event. Any use of the number in a history of the object's value should preserve that distinction, because the supplied evidence contains no appraisal, sale or policy record whatever.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Values in Context

The value of the object within a history of art and material culture, as this evidence construes it, rests on criteria that are qualitative rather than transactional: canonical standing in French Romantic painting, large format, the prominence of the artist, and permanent collection at the Louvre. These are the same anchors the working calculation uses, which means the quantitative band and the cultural account depend on a shared set of judgements about significance rather than on any recorded exchange. The evidence does not establish what any private party paid, offered or insured the work for, and it does not supply provenance intervals, treatments, commissions or prices. What it documents is an institutional painting whose recorded values are its identification, its exhibition history and its collection status, with a disclaimed working estimate standing apart from all of them as an internal planning device rather than a market fact.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Working range: US$80M to US$150M Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: Conservative working insurance range derived from the confirmed identification of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's La Grande Odalisque (1814), oil on canvas, 91 x 162 cm, held by the Louvre Museum as accession RF 1158. The calculation uses the work's established place as a canonical French Romantic masterpiece, its large scale, the prominence of the artist, and its permanent museum collection status as the primary context anchors. Because the work is institutional and not on the open market, no public sale or auction record exists; the range is therefore a model-generated working figure for manual review only, not an appraisal or market valuation. The broad band is intentionally conservative to reflect uncertainty, the absence of directly comparable public transactions, and the non-market status of the object. Qualification: This is a model-generated working insurance range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. It does not reflect access to private insurance records or any actual market transaction. Actual insurance values for institutional collections require qualified professional appraisal and specific policy review.(Wikimedia Commons: The Grande Odalisque, n.d.)