Orientalist paintings mapped skin color onto class position within the harem

Evidence

When Muslim men are present in Orientalist paintings, they are violent, predatory, and cruel. The owner/seller is darker skinned and has Moorish features in contrast to the buyer and his retinue. While the buyer wears a grand green robe, the seller wears more modest clothing. In several Orientalist paintings, class is signified by skin color. In Delacroix’s Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (1834) and Gérôme’s Pool in a Harem (1876), black women are presented as servants who attend to the needs of the fair-skinned wives and concubines of the male patriarch. Thus we see race, class, and gender portrayed in particular ways in the context of European debates over Atlantic slavery and various projects of racial formation. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 305 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Orientalist painting coded class through skin color during European slavery debates — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 305; Orientalist painters favored fair-skinned Circassian women as idealized subjects; European portrayals of the harem projected fantasy rather than observed reality — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 306 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist painting coded class through skin color during European slavery debates #corroborates (0.88) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 305
• Orientalist painters favored fair-skinned Circassian women as idealized subjects #expands (0.82)