The Moorish Warrior

ca. 1878

The lush tapestries, glimmering metalwork, and contemplative warrior in this picture illustrate William Merritt Chase’s imagined view of daily life in the Middle East. To create this picture for a German patron, the American-born, Munich-trained Chase embraced Realist techniques popularized in Europe, as evidenced by his careful treatment of texture and light. Chase never traveled to the Middle East and instead fabricated the entire scene in the studio using a model and props.

This image and others nearby reveal a tendency in nineteenth-century Western art to project Eurocentric fictitious and exoticizing views onto Middle Eastern subject matter.