Odalisque in Stone

Because they were the most favored of garden rocks from the Tang dynasty onward, Taihu rocks are the best-known Chinese rocks. They were retrieved, not from caves or quarries, but from Taihu, or “Grand Lake”, at the southern tip of Jiangsu province, just west of Suzhou. Composed of limestone, Taihu rocks are generally off-white or light grey, with raised patterns and small cavities that texture their surfaces. While smaller examples may have been found in the shallows or washed up on the shoreline, divers were often sent down to great depths to search for larger specimens bound for important gardens.

La Grande Odalisque is a subject that Ingres first created in 1814, and returned to many times. This version was painted in grisaille, a technique that used only shades of grey, often used to accentuate subtle differences in tone and texture as a guide for engravers. In the work, Ingres presents the young woman as an object of sensual pleasure, with no disguise or pretention of representing a more socially acceptable image of Venus. Ingres’ representation of the figure, with elongated back and limbs accentuating the sinuous contours of the body, was criticized for being anatomically impossible. Marcus Flacks questions whether Ingres was stretching reality, or rather trying to achieve his ideal of beauty, something that lies beyond the laws of anatomy.