Baño moro

By 1870 Gérôme had already made his first long trip up the Nile, in 1868, and he came back with sketches, photographs, costumes, and metalwork that he used to build studio scenes like this one. It shows the interior of a hammam, a public steam bath, with a woman seated on the tiled steps while a richly dressed Black attendant brings her a brass basin. This was the first of many bathhouse pictures Gérôme would paint, and they sold extremely well to French and American buyers who read them as glimpses of a forbidden, sensual East, though the setting was assembled from objects on his studio shelves. Look at the brass vessel and the light sliding over the marble and glazed tile, done with the smooth, near-photographic finish that made his name.