03 Orientalist Paintings, Dance of the Almeh, with footnotes, #100

Carl Haag, German, 1820 - 1915

Dance of the Almeh, c. 1870

Watercolour over pencil on paper 

51 by 37.5cm., 20 by 14¾in.

Private collection

The title of this painting refers to the Arabic word analeim, meaning learned woman, which originally applied to professional female improvisers of songs and poems.  By 1850, the term meant virtually any woman dancer.  Their alluring dances, accompanied as shown here by musician playing a two-stringed cello.  European travelers came to think of these dances as a required part of their experience of the Orient.  More on Dance of the Almeh

Carl Haag (20 April 1820 – 24 January 1915) was a Bavarian-born painter who became a naturalized British subject and was court painter to the duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Haag was born in Erlangen, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, and was trained in the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg and at Munich. He first practised as an illustrator and as a painter in oils of portraits and architectural subjects; but in 1847 he settled in England, after which he devoted himself to watercolours, and in 1850 was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours before becoming a full member in 1853. He travelled a lot, especially in the East, and made a considerable reputation by his firmly drawn and carefully elaborated paintings of Eastern subjects.

Towards the end of his professional career, Carl Haag left England and returned to the newly united German Empire, where he died in Oberwesel. More Carl Haag

Jean-Léon Gérôme, (1824–1904), French

Dance of the Almeh, c. 1863

Oil on wood panel

19 3/4 x 32 inches

 The Dayton Art Institute

Gérôme showed the painting at the 1864 Salon, the official annual exhibition in Paris.  Although Gérôme was by then securely established, Dance of the Almeh was highly controversial.  Though apparently popular with the public and with some critics, the painting provoked others to complain about its overt appeal to sexual sensibilities, some claiming that it was too immoral to be publicly shown.  The controversy seems to have had little effect on Gérôme’s career, as he attracted scores of European and American artists to study with him until the very end of his long career. More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Sabre Dance in a Cafe, c. 1875

58.5 x 80 cm

Oil on canvas

Herbert F. Johnson museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Drawing on the pictorial and literary imagination of his time, Gérôme invented oriental scenes, using meticulously accurate detail and his open recourse to photographs taken during his trips to disguise his strategy. The Orient that Gérôme depicted was dreamed up by Victor Hugo in 1829 in his poetic work Orientales, and his “authentic” images at that time confirmed a view of the Orient as a place of sensuality and violence. More on this painting

Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period, and in addition to being a painter, he was also a teacher with a long list of students. More on Jean-Léon Gérôme

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