A Painting That Is Mostly Length

By ReplicArt Studio

How a hand-painted oil painting of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque looks in a room is a length problem first. The Louvre painting is 91 by 162 centimeters, dated 1814, RF 1158. The woman is arranged along that stretch: turban, turned face, a long back, a peacock-feather fan resting on a folded leg. Take the length away and you are no longer looking at the oil painting Ingres signed in Rome.

He painted it there for Caroline Murat. He never went east. The harem is travelogues, a blue bed, and a few studio props. The fact that still matters on a wall is the drawing of the back. That line is why the canvas is wide.

In a room the painting asks for furniture width, not height. A long sideboard, a stretch of wall above a sofa, a hallway that can take a horizon. The smaller sizes keep the pose but lose some of the original’s reach. The larger ones need air on either side. A square hang cuts the back in half.

Ordinary light is kinder to this picture than a spotlight. The blues in the bed and the curtain shift. The skin of the back is a long, even field. A copyist has to hold that field without turning it into porcelain or into texture for its own sake.

We paint the Louvre canvas in several sizes, all in the same proportion. Ask for a custom length if the wall is odd. Do not crop it to fit a square.

The original is on the wall at the Louvre, Salle Daru. A hand-painted oil painting will not replace that room. It can put the same long drawing into a private one if the copyist keeps the length.