HAREM

Naked and semi-draped ladies attended by a black servant in a luxurious Turkish Baths with mosaics and carpet adorns the front cover. This assembly of numerous works by Orientalist painters constitutes a sublime testimony to an imagined fantasy Orient, located between eroticism and sensuality. The masterworks include Harem by Francesco Netti with a bare-breasted dancing white lady, musicians, The Odalesques, richly decorated rooms within palaces, fountains and courtyards of concubines, veiled girls relaxing on a sunny terrace, gardens, flowers, bathing in groups, an Algerian and her Slave with tapestry clothing and rich jewellery being fanned, to the exquisite composition Leila by Frank Dicksee (1853-1928). In the wake of Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign, artists of the 19th century became fascinated by the Orient and, most particularly, the harems which were so remote from western culture. These places rapidly provided a pretext for drawing the languid bodies of naked women, whose depiction in any other context would have been intolerable! Large softback, 280 pages, hundreds of delicious colour plates most full page.