A Woman in Turkish Dress

Liotard's Woman in Turkish Dress, held at the Pera Museum in Istanbul, occupies a uniquely resonant position — a work by the European painter most associated with Ottoman visual culture, now housed in a museum in the city where that culture shaped his art. Liotard spent roughly four years in Constantinople from around 1738 to 1742, adopting Turkish dress himself and producing numerous studies of Ottoman figures. Works in this mode — showing Western women or European figures in Turkish costume — were a staple of the 'turquerie' fashion that swept eighteenth-century European courts. The Pera Museum's holding of this work closes a biographical circle: the pastel was presumably made in Constantinople or shortly after, and has returned to the city of its origin through the vicissitudes of the art market.

Pastel on paper, with Liotard's precise draftsmanship applied to the complex patterns and textures of Ottoman dress. Silk, embroidery, and layered fabrics are distinguished through variations in stroke density and direction. The figure is shown with the same unposed directness as his European portraits.