Odalisque with a Bowl of Fruit

Henri Matisse depicted a white European woman wearing embroidered pants and an open top. She sits in a space with a richly patterned rug and striped wallpaper, giving the room an opulent look. Though made in Matisse’s studio in France, the print and its details are meant to suggest “exotic” regions of North Africa.

Matisse had traveled to the French colony of Algeria in 1906 and the protectorate of Morocco in 1912 and 1913, where he claimed to have seen odalisques—concubines or enslaved women who lived in a harem. Harems were traditionally women’s quarters in Muslim households that men could not access. However, many male European artists in the 19th and 20th centuries created fantasy images of harem women with underlying tones of male dominance and female sexual availability. The imagery was titillating and also reinforced stereotypes of Muslim North Africans held by European colonizers. Thus, while Matisse primarily explored the decorative surface details of the materials, this print also expressed issues of French colonialism and European perceptions of North Africa.