Portrait of Lady Caroline Montagu (d. 1892) as Haidée

George Hayter

1831

Oil on canvas

Chazen Museum of Art

Commissioning a portrait with an exotic setting was popular among the early nineteenth-century aristocracy, a trend that informs this portrait of Lady Caroline Montagu (d. 1892), daughter of the Fifth Duke of Manchester. Lady Caroline is depicted as Haidée, a figure from Lord Byron’s epic poem Don Juan, published between 1819 and 1824. In Byron’s work, Don Juan is shipwrecked on a Greek pirate island where he meets Haidée, the pirate’s daughter. Dressed in an elaborate and brightly colored costume, with a dagger in her sash and a treasure chest…