Changing Representations of the Orient

                As talked about in my last post, the Western fascination with the exotic representation of Eastern culture grew in the 19^th century through orientalist paintings of harems. Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting, Women of Algiers in their Apartment, is an excellent representation of Western ideas of harems and women as being sensual and there and happy to please by their revealing dress and subservient positions. However, as Europeans grew more fascinated by North African culture, their travels to Africa increased as well. This brought more representations of the East by more painters back to Europe which created a more realistic and less fantastic and romantic representations of the culture. This is particularly true for the female painters that visited North Africa during this time.

                Male painters like Delacroix were not actually allowed to enter the harems because no men were allowed in the sacred female space. This allowed their imaginations to bloom with fantasy and ideals of the exotic and sensual spaces. However when female painters such as Henriette Browne went to Turkey in the mid-19^th century she was able to enter the harems and paint them from a first person view. These representations contrasted greatly with the men’s paintings and I believe them to be more accurate because the women actually saw life in the harems with their own eyes.

                The painting below was done by Browne during her visit to Constantinople in 1860. Browne’s representation of the harem revealed it to be a temperate space nothing like the sensual and intimate representation of the harems previously done by males. For one, all of the women are fully draped in fully concealing cloth which reveals nothing but hands and face. Compared with the revealing outfits of exposed arms legs and chests of the women in Delacroix’s painting, these women are clearly not represented as sensually aware and available. Instead, they are doing every day activities such as greeting each other and mutually bowing in respect like the two women in the front, taking care of a young child like the woman behind them, and sitting and standing around the room just spending time together. The women appear to be close at least in a respecting way because the two women are bowing to each other and the women in the back sitting against the wall is patting the girl next to hers back in a loving comforting way. In addition, the bright light and colors as well as the open space above the women because of the tall ceiling makes the room seem less cozy and intimate and more stark, cool, hard, and realistic.

Henriette Browne. A Visit to a Harem. 1860.

                Over all, I think it is important to see how the female painters of the 19^th century brought a different approach to the representation of Eastern culture because of status as a woman and their opportunity to go where men cannot. The realistic depictions of the harems began to slowly change the romanticized Western views of Eastern life. However, in both representations of the harem and the life and culture of those within there remains a mystery and a removed sensation of a bystander looking through a portal for a glimpse at a different world. So although the view of the harem may have changed, the orientalist view of the “otherness” of Eastern culture remained.