The Harem
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Harem[1] is a painting by John Frederick Lewis. It portrays Circassian beauties as the dominant mistresses of the harem, who look down on other women, as implied in the review of the painting in The Art Journal, which described it as follows,
It represents the interior of a harem at Cairo, wherein is seated in luxurious ease a young Turk, attired in the excess of Moslem fashion. Near him, and reclining upon cushions, are two Circassian women, also dressed in the extremity of Oriental taste... On the right is seen a tall Nubian eunuch, who removes from the shoulders of an Egyptian slave the shawl by which she had been covered, in order to show her to the master of the harem; this figure with her high shoulders and the characteristics of her features, is a most successful national impersonation. The Circassian women look languidly to the Egyptian with an expression of supreme contempt, which is responded to by a sneer on the face of the Nubian eunuch.
Orientalizing paintings of nudes were also sometimes exhibited as "Circassians".
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Harem" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
![[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lewis_Harem.jpg){kind=link}