Jean-Etienne Liotard: Woman in a Turkish dress (1752-1754); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702 –1789) was one of the most eccentric artists of his time. The Swiss-born Liotard was a true cosmopolite and he traveled around almost continually. After a visit to Constantinople, which made a profound impression on him, Liotard started to produce art in an ‘exotic’ style. To enforce this unique selling point, Liotard grew a Turkish beard and began to wear a fez and oriental costumes, earning him the nickname ‘The Turk’.
Another notable aspect of Liotard’s art is that he usually worked with pastels. Very few people before or after him exploited the color and softness of this material in such a brilliant and effective way. Liotard’s mastery of the crayons is most significant in his portraits. Among the high classes, Liotard was a very popular portraitist; his clients included the courts of Vienna (the imperial family), Paris (Marie Antoinette) and Rome (Pope Clement XII).
Liotard’s preference for the exotic is also recognizable in this charming pastel drawing of a young woman in eastern dress. It might be a portrait of his wife, Marie Fargues, a Huguenote who lived in the Netherlands. Liotard married her in Amsterdam in 1757. At her request, he shaved off his beard, which he probably considered to be a great loss. He drew a number of self-portraits that emphasized his now smooth chin and he immediately started to grow his beard again after Marie's death.
This drawing is part of Liotard’s private collection of pastels. Because his son was married to a Dutch girl, the inheritance came into the hands of their Dutch descendants after Liotard’s death. At the end of the 19th century the family decided to donate everything to the Rijksmuseum, that since then possesses the largest collection of Liotard’s work outside Switzerland.