The ambassador from Mysore - a portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan by Vigée Le Brun, 1788

On 30 January, during Sotheby's Master Paintings Evening Sale, Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun's striking portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan, an Indian ambassador to France, sold for an astounding $7.2 million, setting a new world auction record for any female artist of the pre-modern era.

From Sotheby's auction notes:

On July 16, 1788, almost a year to the day before the storming of the Bastille, three ambassadors from Mysore, India, arrived in Paris. Muhammed Dervish Khan, the lead ambassador and subject of Vigée Le Brun's portrait, along with the scholar Akbar Ali Khan and the elder Muhammed Osman Khan, were sent by Tipu Sultan, the powerful ruler of Mysore (1750-1799) who sought the support of Louis XVI in an effort to drive the British out of India, unaware that Louis XVI’s power was beginning to deteriorate, and that the King’s taste for extravagant foreign goods over those made at home was stirring up tensions in the country.

In this volatile political climate the three ambassadors' arrival nevertheless caused a sensation in Paris as they made their way to Versailles, with local newspapers like the Journal de Paris reporting on the ambassadors’ whereabouts almost daily. In 1788, Vigée Le Brun, who was at the height of her fame and influence among the powerful elite of Paris and Versailles, saw the ambassadors at the Opera. She recalled of the encounter, “I saw these Indians at the opera and they appeared to me so remarkably picturesque that I thought I should like to paint them. But as they communicated to their interpreter that they would never allow themselves to be painted unless the request came from the King, I managed to secure that favour from His Majesty.”

As Muslim men, the ambassadors being represented pictorially, let alone by a female artist, was unheard of, however after the request came from the King, they agreed to sit for her at their hôtel in Paris. She painted Dervish Khan first, “standing, with his hand on his dagger. He threw himself into such an easy, natural position of his own accord that I did not make him change it.”

The resulting portrait of Dervish Khan.. is an extraordinary reflection on a French woman’s perception of a powerful Indian man. The intensity in which Dervish Khan is portrayed is unlike any other portrait by Vigée. There is an initial element of fierceness in the portrait, but the elegance and grandeur of the costume overcomes that. He wears the traditional costume that so enamored the French men and particularly women who encountered his embassy, so fascinated by the Indian fabrics which were making their way into French fashions. Indeed this sheer, layered white muslin recalls the dress scandalously worn by Marie-Antoinette in a portrait painted by Vigée a few years prior.

However, the turmoil had only just begun. When the painting had finished drying, Vigée sent for the works but was refused; Dervish Khan had hidden his portrait behind the bed. The ever-resourceful Vigée strategically convinced his servant to steal it back for her, only to later hear that Dervish Khan had then planned to murder the servant for this transgression. Dervish Khan was only mollified when he was falsely reassured that it was the King who wanted the portrait.

Back in the artist's possession the painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1789, opening in August, amid a disquieting political climate and was received by the public with immense curiosity and critical acclaim. By October, however, Vigée had fled Paris in fear of her life after mobs had invaded Versailles. It can be surmised that she kept the work in her personal collection but left it at home in France when she went to Italy, given that the painting next appears in the estate sale of her husband, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun.

Dervish Khan met an even more fateful demise. The embassy did not achieve their goal of a treaty with France and upon return to Mysore the ambassadors were beheaded for their failure. These years marked a turning point in Europe’s relationship with India; while a mutual exoticism and fascination was nurtured for the centuries leading up to this point, by 1799 the divide of “East” and “West” had shifted into an attitude of superiority by the Europeans as they continued to expand and colonize.

Vigée’s haunting portrait of Dervish Khan is compelling for many reasons, particularly as it captures this very unique moment in history. On the eve of Revolution, a female artist in France gloriously captures a striking foreigner, a Muslim ambassador from India, as he encounters the exotic world of Paris: in hindsight, the portrait is even more powerful than the sitter himself had hoped to be portrayed.

Random females - a selection of portraits

Portrait of a Young Lady in a Blue Dress, by Franz Schrotzberg, circa 1830s.

Anonymous Daguerreotype, circa 1840s-50s.

Mrs. Francine Clore, née Halphen, by Sir James Gunn, circa 1940.

Geertruida the Dubbelde, wife of Aert van Nes, by Bartholomeus van der Helst (background by Ludolf Bakhuysen), 1668.

Marie Caroline, duchesse de Berry, in the gardens of the Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, by Baron Gérard, 1820.

"The Blue Veil", by Glauco Cambon, 1907.

Joséphine Baker, by Baron George Hoyningen-Huene, 1929.

Celeste Coltellini, Madame Meuricoffre, by Antoine-Jean Gros, 1790s.

Doña María Antonia Gonzaga de Caracciolo, marquesa viuda de Villafranca, by Francisco Goya y Lucientes, circa 1795.

Irene von Meyendorff, circa 1941-44.

"Portrait in Red", by Adolfo Feragutti Visconti, 1915.

Duchess Charlotte Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin as a child, by Christoph Friedrich Reinhold Lisiewski, 1791.

"Portrait d'une princesse de Bragance", Gillot Saint-Èvre, 1832.

Princess Egon von Ratibor, née Princess Leopoldine Lobkowicz, by Philip de László, 1899.

Minnie, the wife of Harold Alzana (seated behind), in costume for the "Gold Rush" tableau, 1949.

Mrs. Daniel DeSaussure Bacot, by Samuel F. B. Morse, 1820.

Anna Pavlovna of Russia, Queen of the Netherlands, by François Joseph Kinson, 1824.

 Marie Madeleine Maret, née Léjéas, duchesse de Bassano, by Baron Gérard, circa 1805-10.

Court Lady, by Diego Velázquez, circa 1635.

Marie Henriette, duchesse de Brabant, later Queen of the Belgians, Sir William Ross, 1853.

Rachel, Countess of Dudley, née Gurney, wife of the 2nd Earl, circa 1911. (The photograph is dated "1911", but may have been taken earlier.)

"Madame P.", by Eugène Fichel, 1857.

Madame de Serres, by Joseph Boze, 1787.

Portrait of an Unknown Lady, circa 1830s.

Unknown Woman, by Carl Timoleon von Neff, 1845.

Princess Maria Cristina Amelia Teresa of Naples and Sicily, later Queen of Sardinia, by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1790.

Unknown subject and artist, circa 1690-1700.

The Reventlow Sisters, Malvina and Hilda, by Heinrich August Georg Schiøtt, circa 1850.

Adriana Jacobusdr Hinlopen, wife of Johannes Wijbrants, by Lodewijk van der Helst, 1667.

"A Portrait of a Beauty", Qing Dynasty, Nineteenth Century.

Portrait of a Lady In a Blue Dress, by Anton Ebert, 1893.

Unknown, circa 1860. Courtesy Ralf de Jonge.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman, by Alexander Grigoryevich Varnek, circa 1810s-20s.

Self-portrait by Therese Concordia Mengs Maron, sister of Anton Raphael Mengs, and wife to another painter, Anton von Maron, circa 1744-45.

Grand - Madame Grand/Catherine de Talleyrand-Périgord, Princesse de Bénévent by Vigée Le Brun and Gérard

Portrait by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783.

Very loosely adapted from the Metropolitan Museum's website - both paintings are in their collection - and other sources:

Noël-Catherine Verlée (or Worlée; 1761, Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu  – December 10, 1834, Paris), was the daughter of a minor French official posted to India. At the age of barely sixteen Catherine married a civil servant of Swiss descent working in Calcutta, George Francis Grand. The couple separated soon after, due to her brief but scandalous affair with Sir Philip Francis, a British politician. Subsequently, Madame Grand removed to London.

In about 1782 she moved to Paris where, being a beautiful blond, ill-educated but musical and clever, she became a very fashionable courtesan; the portrait that Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted of her in 1783 when she was only twenty-two attests to her lively personality and stunning looks at the time. She returned to Britain just before the French Revolution, but by 1794, with the Revolution waning, Madame Grand had returned to France.

Madame Grand now entered into a highly visible affair with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, later prince de Bénévent, the brilliant - and infamously wily - statesman and former bishop of Autun, who had become a principal figure in the emerging government of the Directory. When she was arrested on suspicion of espionage in March 1798, Talleyrand secured her freedom. That same year, having been estranged from her husband for more than ten years, Madame Grand obtained a divorce in absentia.

Portrait by François Pascal Simon, baron Gérard, circa 1804-5.

Elaborate negotiations with Napoléon and the Vatican were required before the former bishop was allowed to marry, at Neuilly, on September 10, 1802; despite the First Consul's strong reservations, Napoléon and Joséphine signed their marriage contract. Upon their first official reception at the Tuileries, Napoléon is alleged to have remarked, "I hope that the good conduct of citoyenne Talleyrand will cause the fickleness of madame Grand to be forgotten." (The alternate - and more likely - version of the marriage negotiations is that Talleyrand was actually quite reluctant to regularize their union, and had to be coerced by Napoléon for the sake of propriety and his political career.)

With her less than respectable personal history, Napoléon ensured that Madame de Talleyrand was rarely at court; his Empress' own scandalous past was problem enough. At any rate, the couple quickly drifted apart, living separately; Talleyrand had already taken an official mistress, Madame Dubois, when he married, and was soon preoccupied with other women. Eventually, he arranged that his wife should go and live - luxuriously - in London. She returned to Paris in 1817, during the Restoration, and lived there quietly until her death at the age of seventy-three.