Delacroix, Eugène (1798-1863)
Portrait d’une femme coiffée d’un turban bleu (Portrait of a Woman in a Blue Turban)
c.1827
Oil on canvas, 60.33 × 49.21 cm
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
In this portrait, Eugène Delacroix uses the familiar conventions of Renaissance portraiture to lend a solemn dignity to the model. The solid pyramid formed by her body, set at a slight angle to the viewer, and the low horizon of the landscape behind her remind us of Leonardo da Vinci‘s Mona Lisa. Although the sitter’s blue turban and paisley shawl seem to allude to her status as an exotic foreigner, these accessories were probably studio props, much like the elaborate jeweled brooch, which appears in another portrait Delacroix painted at around the same time. Although we do not know the name of the sitter for this portrait, she was certainly one of the non-European models that Delacroix employed during the 1820s while working on his monumental paintings of subjects drawn from Near Eastern history and Orientalist literature. (DMA)