Treading out the Grain in Egypt 

Jean-Léon Gérôme painted this scene of ‘Treading out the Grain in Egypt’ sometime in the late nineteenth century. At the time, European artists, such as Gérôme, were fascinated with painting scenes from other cultures. How might we understand this type of painting today? Well, we can start by acknowledging that nineteenth-century European society was very interested in representing foreign cultures. This was a product of colonialism, which brought different parts of the world into closer contact - even as it enshrined an unequal relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Paintings like this one, then, tell us about the society that produced them. Egypt in the late nineteenth century was under British control, and Gérôme's painting may be seen as a comment on the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. To learn more, we might consider what writings about Egypt were circulating in Europe at the time, and how such images were consumed by the art market. This will help us appreciate art as something that is contingent on its social and institutional context.