About ‘Woman in Turkish Dress, Angelica Kauffmann’
Woman in Turkish Dress, Angelica Kauffmann (1771)
Loose yet assured brushwork, seen in gold edging along the shoulders, animates this painting of an unknown woman wearing Turkish clothing. Foreign attire was popular in London throughout the 18th century, and Angelica Kauffmann painted several versions of garments that were based on clothing worn in the Ottoman Empire. Western Europeans, including the British, appropriated and exoticized Middle Eastern societies, often using stereotypes, an embodiment of a colonial outlook towards non-European cultures. For this portrait, the artist depicted a loose gown trimmed in white lace ("gömlek"), a more fitted long-sleeved salmon-colored garment with buttons down the front ("yelek"), and an outer long coat edged in lace and fashioned from plum-colored velvet ("entari"). Dated on the back of the canvas in what appears to be the artist’s own hand, this painting may have served as an advertisement to convince women in London society to have their portraits painted in Turkish dress.
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