Painting before the twentieth century was a propaganda tool, just like television in recent decades. Those images conveyed by the paintings of travelers and orientalists were often paid advertisements, to convey a specific perception that is intended to be entrenched in people's minds.

There were many tools of colonialism (colonialism) to control the Middle and Near East in the previous centuries, armies, warships and weapons, and with them a large number of artists who conveyed a picture, usually false, of the East in hundreds of paintings in what is known as "Orientalist art".

Today there are thousands of paintings dealing with the lives of Arabs and Muslims in previous centuries.

The vast majority of these paintings are characterized by an imaginary tendency that has nothing to do with reality, but the European colonization of the East preferred that this imprint be clear because of the specific political messages it contains that may facilitate many military operations.

"The first phase of the history of Orientalist art can be described as the imagined Orient. Imaginary images of Orientals were created in the 18th century by those who seldom, if ever, saw the real thing" (John Mackenzie, Orientalism).

The vast majority of the paintings that dealt with the lives of the Arabs were characterized by an imaginary tendency that has nothing to do with reality (communication sites)

Beautiful and dangerous place

The Haramlek occupied a wide area of ​​the imaginations of foreign orientalists, whose paintings served a greater colonial goal, as shown by several studies.

The Haramlek appears in orientalist paintings adorned with many fantasies, fantasy and sensuality. According to these paintings, the eastern man is excessively masculine in his sensuality. He enslaves many women and locks them up for his own pleasures in houses or huge halls known as “The Haramlek.”

To name a few, we see in Stephan Sedlacek's "Eastern Harem Scene" from 1868 to 1936 how Muslims and Arabs appear according to the prevailing patterns of artistic documentation adopted by the European Orientalist imagination in the service of colonialism.

The harem is shown in the painting in fiery colors, predominantly orange tones.

A sultan, a master, or a sheikh sits watching a maid dancing, while others around him sit at his service.

The man is sitting on a comfortable mattress, and the place is decorated with many fabrics and Arabic carpets, and behind him is a huge tree that shades the place that looks like a body of water.

The painting presents the harem as a garden or paradise in which the oriental man lives for his sensual pleasures and carnal lusts.

In this scene alone, the number of women is seven, all of them adorned and gathered for the pleasure of the eastern man.

A prison for women, a paradise for men

We also see in the painting “A Visit to the Harem”, by the French Orientalist Henriette Browne, born 1829 and died 1901, a number of women wearing multi-colored velvet dresses in a place closer to a hermit. The hall is a bit dark, the furniture is few, and the window is closed and some sneak in the light.

The painting gives two hypotheses about the harem.

The first is that it is a place where women are imprisoned, and what accompanies that of distress or darkness and isolation.

The second is that the sanctuary, although it is similar to the Mahbas, the women in it are beautiful and dressed to satisfy the desires of the master of the house, who in the imagination of the spectator will be a very harsh man.

The orientalist conception showed the harem as a place closer to a women’s prison in which the desires of the master of the house are satisfied (communication sites)

"The Orientalist perception of Arabs and Muslims has nothing to do with the real world. We have distorted reality with an imaginary vision of these cultures that has nothing really to do with the reality that these people have lived through over the centuries. We have had our view of this world according to the benefits of our own culture" (art critic José Broca) .

A metaphor for the Ottoman Empire

The specialist in Oriental studies Megan Mac-Daniel mentioned - in her treatise on the Haramlek and the Ottoman Empire - that the painters were working, motivated by their pre-prepared personal concepts, to imagine the East as a place of sedition, fun and excitement, and with another motive, which is the desire to make a living, so they presented paintings that mix reality and imagination to ensure Selling quickly in European markets.

She asserts that these motives and influences ensured that even Western painters who were able to truly reach the harem and portray some women presented paintings that may not be credible.

As for the paintings of the orientalists about the harem by men, they tend to be pure fantasy and fantasy.

This is simply because entering the sanctuary was the preserve of the master of the house or the owner of the house or some of the women of his family, and a foreigner, regardless of his job title, was not able to enter the halls of the harem or see what the sanctuary actually entailed.

"In the Haram" by the Spanish painter Juan Jiménez Martin (communication sites)

Was the Spanish painter Juan Jiménez Martín, who lived from 1858 to 1901, able to reach the harem hall that he presented in his painting “In the Sanctuary” and sit there for hours recording the concubines and concubines swaying coquettishly in front of their master!

of course not.

The scene that we see in this painting, as in many paintings, is the product of the fantasies and ideas of the European who projected on the East, as every vessel, including it, exudes in the end.