The Arab Tale-teller

This picture was painted in Rome by Vernet immediately after his first visit to Algeria. One of many paintings the artist exhibited at the Paris Salon and elsewhere imitating or depicting real or imagined aspects of Middle Eastern, Asian, or North African life. The composition was made for the 12th Earl of Pembroke who at the time lived in Paris. The tale-teller in the right foreground wears a grey and white striped burnouse; the classically posed girl on the left (her pose derived from the Venus de Milo) alludes to the nobility which Vernet and other European artists in the nineteenth century professed to discern in the common people of North Africa and the Middle East. The composition has interesting parallels with Delacroix's famous painting 'Les Femmes d'Alger' (1834; Paris, Louvre) which was also exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1834. Also in 1833 (though the painting is dated 1834) Vernet painted a second version, with variations, of the Wallace Collection's painting (Chantilly, Musée Condé).