Object Type
At first sight Life in the Hareem, Cairo is another `Orientalist' picture with no obvious story. Yet the posy of flowers held in the lap of the main figure is a love letter, in the language of flowers, used in Turkey and Egypt as well as Britain. This was a favourite theme in Lewis's work. The whole scene could be interpreted as a showing a woman about to take coffee with her confidante to discuss the newly arrived love letter and its implicit offer. Then they will read the future in the coffee grounds in the traditional manner (still practised in Cairo), to see how the affair may turn out.
People
Lewis painted various versions of this theme. He arrived in Egypt in 1841 and lived for nearly a decade as a wealthy Turk in a grand 16th-century house in Cairo. Lewis was obliged to do this, as at that time his neighbours would not have tolerated Western customs in this district of the City. In 1847 he married Marian Harper, who appears as a model in many of his pictures, including this one. In Cairo he lived with his bride like a Turkish Bey, or grandee, in everything except the actual practice of the faith of Islam, so the decorous pictures of Marian in her robes in that splendid house are not really fantasies at all.
Physical description
View of the the interior of the women's quarters of a Mamluk house in Cairo, a richly dressed woman reclining on cushions, holding a posy of flowers and another woman bringing a tray with coffee cups. In the background, beyond the doorway, a male African servant.
Place of Origin
Walton-on-Thames, England (made)
Date
1858 (painted)
Artist/maker
Lewis, John Frederick (RA POWCS), born 1805 - died 1876 (painter (artist))
Materials and Techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour
Marks and inscriptions
JFL 1858
Dimensions
Height: 61.5 cm, Width: 49 cm
Object history note
According to Robert Hewison, (see Tate Exhibition catalogue below) this is probably the painting that was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858 as number 122, `An inmate of the Hhareem, Cairo.' It was bought by James John Ruskin, the father of John Ruskin., as a gift for his son. Joan and Joseph Severn, John Ruskin's guardians, began to sell off works from his collection in the 1890s. According to Museum records this painting was bought from the dealers Thomas Agnew & Sons on the advice of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, a noted painter and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites. The spelling of Hhareem with a double `h' is Lewis's attempt to represent the Arabic letter `ha' which is more strongly aspirated than the English `h' sound. Lewis had Arabic lessons while he lived in Cairo.
Descriptive line
Water and bodycolour painting showing a view of the the interior of the women's quarters of a Mamluk house in Cairo.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Major-General J.M. Lewis, CBE, John Frederick Lewis, R.A. 1805-1876, Leigh-on-Sea, 1978
Robert Hewison, [entry in] Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Paphaelites, catalogue of exhibition held at the Tate Gallery, 2000, p.138, illustrated.
100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum. London: V&A, 1985, p.156
The following is the full text of the entry:
"John Frederick Lewis 1805-1876
British School
LIFE IN THE HAREM, CAIRO
Signed with the artist's monogram lower right JFL 1858
Water-colour, 60.6 x 47.7 cm
679-1893
At the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Englishman's long-repressed curiosity about foreign parts led to an ever-widening circle of foreign places recorded by our water-colourists and in their resulting publications. The movement, which had begun by surveying the medieval towns and ancient monuments of France and Germany, was increasingly drawn to warmer climes and more exotic cultures. By the end of the 1840s three artists in particular - Sir David Wilkie, David Roberts and John Frederick Lewis - had gone to Spain to investigate the people and the remains of the moorish-culture there and actually crossed the Mediterranean to study the life and the landscape of the Arabs of North Africa and Palestine. In this respect the English water-colour movement became less insular and partook of the general European interest in the culture of the Arabs; one thinks of the desert scenes of Horace Vernet, or Delacroix's famous trip to Morocco and Algiers in 1832.
Life in the Harem is both a record of this interest, and of one man's insatiable wanderlust. John Frederick Lewis, son of a successful engraver, was already a successful water-colour painter and society man when in 1837 he set off on a journey through Europe and the East that was to culminate in a ten-year-stay in Cairo in the years 1841-51. Here he spent his time in making endless studies of the people and life of the culture in which he lived, and on his return to London in 1851 he commenced a succession of scenes from Arab life in water-colours and oils that were to entrance the Victorians by their brilliance of colour and minuteness of descriptive detail.
In style he cannot be said to belong to any particular artistic movement such as Pre-Raphaelitism, though he shared their concern for minute detail; he seems to have acted mainly as a kind of documentary reporter, telling the Victorian public about a culture that was still alien and foreign to them.
Lift in the Harem is reminiscent of his first great success, 'The Harem' of 1850, but has a less obvious erotic appeal (that picture showed a new recruit to the Harem being exposed to her pasha). His mood here is infinitely more relaxed and she seems to be enjoying a quiet afternoon out of the sun while her maidservant brings her some refreshment. Note how Lewis brilliantly suggests the heat of the afternoon by his use of Chinese white to heighten the colours, as well as the depiction of the reflected light on the face of her maid-servant entering through the door. Yet we can sense that, for all her life of luxury, the girl is entrapped - not merely by the weightiness of her clothes, or the grid-like pattern of the verticals and horizontals of the room (a device that Lewis borrowed, like the mirror, from Dutch painting), but purely by the absence of any reference in the picture to any kind of life outside the Harem. Her one view through the window is that of a mosque, a symbol of the culture that left women few alternatives to the Harem. In many ways her situation is not dissimilar from that of an ordinary English upper-class lady of the 19th century - a cosseted doll kept on sufferance in a man's world - and it may well be that Lewis's appeal to the Victorians rested not simply on his superficial depiction of an alien and exotic culture, but also on his underlying implication that the basic assumptions about the organization of human society were the same throughout the world, East and West.
Howard Coutts"
Exhibition History
Orientalism (The Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney) 01/01/1997-31/12/1998)
Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Paphaelites (Tate 09/03/2000-28/05/2000)
Labels and date
British Galleries:
The artist, J.F. Lewis, had lived in Cairo. He painted various versions of this theme, drawing on his personal observations. Pictures of beautiful women in exotic dress and settings, whether based on fact or fantasy, were popular. Such images inspired fashions for interior decoration and dress. [27/03/2003]
Associated names
Lewis, Marian
Subjects depicted
Cairo; Interiors; Harems; Mamluk architecture
Categories
British Galleries; Black History
Production Type
Unique
Collection code
PDP
