Henry Guillaume Schlesinger

(French, 1814-1893)

A harem interior

Footnotes

Provenance
Anon. sale, Sotheby's, London, 19 June 1991, lot 182.

Henry Schlesinger was born in Germany and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna before moving to Paris and exhibiting at the Salon from 1840. Four years earlier he had visited Istanbul, where he was commissioned to paint several portraits of the sultan, Mahmud II, including one of him wearing western style clothing which is now on display at The Topkapi Palace Museum. This visit was to provide the artist with material which he drew on throughout his career. He was awarded the Legion d'honneur in 1866, the year after he painted The Five Senses, a suite of paintings purchased from the Salon by Emperor Napoleon III, and sold in these rooms (Bonhams, London, 31 March 2021, lot 43).

The present lot is a typically sumptuous work by Schlesinger; the central figure, whose role is not entirely clear - although given his extravagant costume and headdress he might be the harem master - is surrounded by a group of beautiful women all vying for his attention. The texture of the drapery is exquisite and would have found favour with the contemporary audience in Paris, who would have responded to the quality of the brushwork and been intrigued by the exotic narrative.

This group of eleven women form an arc which draws the viewer into the centre of the composition and concentrates the eye on the man and his wonderful costume. No detail is spared – a parrot can be seen playing with a woman whose hair is adorned with fresh roses presumably picked from the garden visible beyond the green curtain in the background. Another girl holds a mirror up to the man, as he is serenaded by a beauty. A discarded hookah, the bowl still smoking, can be seen in the foreground, the effects clearly visible in the attitude of the dark-haired woman reclining nearby.

The mystery and exoticism of the east, something of course that few Europeans had witnessed first-hand, is celebrated in this painting by an artist who understood his audience and presented them with an idyllic vision of life in a harem.