Odalisque 

Jean-Joseph-Benjamin Constant painted this Odalisque in the late 19th century, a period when French artists were fascinated by the "Orient." Constant’s painting participates in a long tradition of Orientalism. The “odalisque” or harem concubine, became a popular subject. These paintings served as a site for the projection of European fantasies, mainly sexual ones, onto the peoples and cultures of North Africa and the Middle East. In this version, the whiteness of the model is emphasized. As the French established colonies in the region, paintings like this served to justify a social order of racial and gendered domination. For historians, images like these are rich sources. They reveal a great deal about the politics of representation and the power of imagery, and we can learn more through analysis of colonial archives, travel writing, and art criticism of the period.