I chose the painting A Turkish Bath 1880-1885 by Jean-Léon Gérôme. He was a wildly successful painter of his time because of the paintings he created that were pictured in Egyptian or in the Middle East. Many people believed that his paintings were very realistic when in fact they were entirely fictitious which is why his art is identified as Orientalism. While he did travel to the Middle East in his lifetime and was privy to many cultural ideals, he made entirely fictitious paintings, meaning that all of it came from his imagination. He probably saw himself almost like a writer, because each painting has a story and if you look closely you can read it and get meaning from it. He was giving us a private look at what “really” happened in these…show more content… The nude woman getting bathed is in the exact center, she is the central focus. Her soft skin is luminous, she shines in all the right places where the light hits her. Her languid arm is stretched out while the dark woman scrubs it clean with a cloth. Let’s look at the differences between the women, both in clothing and in physical attributes. The woman getting bathed looks idealized she has what many of the time period would consider a perfect body. It reminds me of Allegory of Venus and Cupid by Bronzino, this is what her body would have looked like from behind, at least in my mind. Because that is what academic artists did, they were formulaic, and were based in the Classical and the Renaissance eras. The darker woman is stark in comparison. She is muscular, strong, sturdy. She is held upright clothed, almost as if in power. That is curious because considering the time period that was far from the truth for people of color. This white pale woman looks defeated in her pose, her head is facing the ground away from everyone. The colored woman has a caring expression on her face like she cares for this woman and is bathing her with