Mavi Boncuk | And not long ago, that would have been surprising, because the harem was a defining motif of European Orientalism, and one of the most culturally sensitive at that. Though its basic meaning was “family quarters,” the word harem—derived from the Arabic word haram, meaning “forbidden”—was a kind of metaphorical screen onto which European male artists imagined the lives of the women they could not see, and what they projected was at best inaccurate and kitsch and at worst lurid, voyeuristic and demeaning....Men were not the only ones to paint “harem scenes.” Amid the most revealing and riveting of the paintings in the “Lure of the East” exhibition is “A Visit: Harem Interior, Constantinople,” 1860, by Henriette Browne, who was able to come and go in the women’s quarters. It depicts an austere, almost empty hall to which the visitors have even brought their own cushions, where a child clings uneasily to its mother. It is an ordinary moment amid polite but obviously tedious rituals and family matters.
It was in the 19th century, when P&O steamships and the Orient Express railway opened up the Near East to tourists, that the demand for a taste of this exotic, erotic world soared and the fashion for Orientalism took off. In 1861, the French painter Henriette Browne, who had accompanied her husband on a diplomatic trip to Constantinople, caused a sensation when she exhibited one of her paintings, Harem Interior, in Paris. It was a rather a tame account of veiled, long-robed ladies chatting below a row of Oriental arches, but it was considered the first eyewitness view of the inside of a harem.
It so excited, and frustrated, the French poet and critic Theophile Gautier, he wrote that only women should travel to the Orient, because only they could see what was really worth seeing.
It was clearly what the public wanted to see, and what many artists enjoyed producing. British artists either took extended tours of the Orient, or like John Frederick Lewis moved wholesale to Cairo or Constantinople, to ensure the authenticity of their work.
SOURCE: Behind Orientalism’s Veil
A Greek Captive (1863), 92.1 x 73 cm by Henriette Browne This work is typical of the artist's genre paintings of children. The sitter was an Italian girl, Maria Pasqua Abruzzesi (1856 - 1939), who was taken by her father to Paris in 1862. Famous for her beauty, she enjoyed great success as a child model, and also posed for the artists Hébert and Bonnat.
[1] Sophie de Bouteiller (June 16, 1829 Paris– 1901), was a French Orientalist painter and traveler. Née Sophie Boutellier, Henriette Browne was the pseudonym for Mme Jules de Saux, the wife of diplomat Henry Jules de Saux, secretary of Count Walewksi. She studied under Perin and Chaplin, and exhibited at the Salon from 1853. She specialised in genre scenes, especially Near-Eastern and religious subjects. She also worked as an engraver. She was She is considered a pioneer in Orientalist painting.
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