Arab Soldier Flirting

1878 was a world's fair year in Paris. The Exposition Universelle ran from May to November on the Champ de Mars, with a street of national pavilions where the Ottoman and Egyptian sections drew heavy crowds, and Eastern subjects sold well in the city that season. Ralli was living and working in Paris then, and this is one of the pictures that market wanted: a uniformed soldier making advances to a woman, a scene of the East supplied by a European painter to European buyers who took it for reportage. The Greek title the museum works from says plainly that he is flirting. The canvas is 45 by 33 centimetres, drawing room size, and it reached the gallery with the collection of Evripidis Koutlidis, a private holding of modern Greek painting that has been shown alongside the National Gallery's own since 1977.