ABSTRACT
Antoine Galland’s translation of The Thousand and one Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights, between 1704 and 1717, together with European military accounts following the conquests of the Arab East by various colonial powers, brought to the West images of mysterious, exotic locations, and enchanting cities that promised endless adventures. What ensued was a massive stream of artists and writers, leaving industrial Europe, seeking inspiration for their art in Oriental venues, which included cities such as Algiers, Marrakech, Istanbul, Cairo, and the numerous ‘virgin’ oases tucked behind magical dunes in the Sahara desert. Their expectations knew no bounds; what they were looking for was not limited to a tourist’s visit to the locations, but to reach for the inaccessible objects and subjects of an Orient at the dusk of its glories. Whereas Oriental objects became easily accessible and huge collections were shipped to Europe, the Oriental subjects, behind the high walls of Oriental harems, remained for a long time inaccessible, but to the fertile imagination of painters of whom I would like to cite Eugéne Delacroix and his famous painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834).
