Georges Jules Victor Clairin - Entering the Harem - Walters 3782 (2)

A haughty sheik stands at the entrance to his harem as a servant pulls aside a curtain to reveal its inhabitants. The elaborately inlaid door and the honeycombed vaulting of the architecture recall the Hall of the Two Sisters at the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain.
In the late 19th century, Clairin was a prominent painter of Islamic subjects, portraits, and murals. He traveled to Spain and Morocco in 1868, and, in 1871, he returned to Morocco for a year and a half. Drawing on these experiences, he created dramatic, quasi-historical scenes set in 15th-century Moorish Spain.