# Orientalist Interior: Nude in a Harem [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [CHASSÉRIAU, Théodore]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Oil on panel, 46 x 38 cm ## Commentary Women at their toilettes had been a popular theme since the Renaissance, and orientalist scenes, usually in Turkish costume, had circulated since that time. These scenes had usually been boudoir pictures, however, private paintings and therefore private subjects. In the nineteenth century these subjects enter more frequently into the public sphere. Views of the \(wholly invented\) Harem offered a sexually exoticized, and some argue inherently politicised, new subject in Orientalism, a new genre. Chassériau painted three Harem interiors after his trip to North Africa, the first dated 1849, and the last 1854; the painting here is dated between these two dates. <P> <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT CELLPADDING=5 BORDER=1 WIDTH=320 BGCOLOR="\#99CCCC"> <TR VALIGN=MIDDLE><TD><IMG SRC="/support/gif/listen.gif" BORDER=0 VALIGN=MIDDLE> Suggested listening \(streaming mp3, 8 minutes\):<BR><A HREF="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/music1/19\_cent/rossini\_algir.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=350,height=350'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return true"><B>Gioacchino Rossini: L'Italiana in Algeri, overture</B></A> </TD></TR></TABLE> ## Related artworks - [Andromeda and the Nereids]() - [Desdemona Retiring to her Bed]() - [Medea about to Kill her Children]() - [Peace]() - [Reverend Father Dominique Lacordaire]() - [Sappho Leaping into the Sea from the Leucadian Promontory]() - [Self-Portrait]() - [The Artist's Sisters]() - [The Tepidarium \(detail\)]() - [The Tepidarium]() - [The Toilet of Esther]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()