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

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…

Please follow link for full post

24 Works, December 9th. is Leopold Müller’s day, his art, illustrated with footnotes #246

Leopold Carl Müller
Rest In The Desert In Giza, c. 1874
Oil on canvas
111.76 cm × 210.82 cm
Private collection

Leopold Carl Müller (9 December 1834–4 August 1892) was an Austrian genre painter noted for his Orientalist works.

Born in Dresden to Austrian, he was a pupil of Karl von Blaas and of Christian Ruben at the Academy in Vienna. Obliged to support his family after his father’s death, he worked eight years as an illustrator for the Vienna Figaro. Continuing his studies subsequently, he visited repeatedly Italy and Egypt, and made his name favorably known through a series of scenes from popular life in Italy and Hungary…

Please follow link for full post

Frederick Arthur Bridgman, 1847 – 1928, AMERICAN Almeh Flirting With An Armenian Policeman in Cairo 01 Paintings, The amorous game, Part 18 – With Footnotes

Frederick Arthur Bridgman, 1847 – 1928, AMERICAN

Almeh Flirting With An Armenian Policeman in Cairo

Oil on canvas

 55.5 cm (21.85 in.), Width: 46 cm (18.11 in.)

Private collection

Almeh (Egyptian Arabic) was the name of a class of courtesans or female entertainers in Arab Egypt, women educated to sing and recite classical poetry and to discourse wittily, connected to the qayna slave singers of pre-Islamic Arabia. They were educated girls of good social standing, trained in dancing, singing and poetry, present at festivals and entertainments, and hired as mourners at funerals.

In the 19th century, almeh came to be used as a synonym of ghawazi, the erotic dancers of Dom ethnicity whose performances were banned in 1834 by Muhammad Ali of Egypt. As a result of the ban, the ghawazi dancers were forced to pretend that they were in fact awalim. Transliterated into French as almée, the term came to be synonymous with “belly dancer” in European Orientalism of the 19th century. More on Almeh

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (November 10, 1847 – 1928) was an American artist, born in Tuskegee, Alabama. The son of a physician, Bridgman would become one of the United States’ most well-known and well-regarded painters and become known as one of the world’s most talented “Orientalist” painters. He began as a draughtsman in New York City, for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of Jean-Leon Gerome. Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large and important composition, The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile, in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor. Other paintings by him were An American Circus in Normandy, Procession of the Bull Apis (now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and a Rumanian Lady (in the Temple collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). More on Frederick Arthur Bridgman

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

We do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.