Visions of Morocco and Tunisia

Paintings by Sargent, Metcalf, Tanner and Macke

Jul 11, 2009

Works by artists John Singer Sargent, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Henry Ossawa Tanner and August Macke took Orientalist inclinations to new levels.

The lure of foreign lands like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt led various 19th century European and American artists to travel abroad and create a lush, exotic style of painting known as Orientalism.

Major representatives of the Orientalist school included Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gerôme, with many works produced depicting odalisques, sultans, minarets, or camels traveling across moonlit deserts. And while artists John Singer Sargent, Willard Metcalf, Henry Ossawa Tanner and August Macke were by no means exclusively Orientalist painters, they all made trips to Morocco or Tunisia during their respective careers and were inspired to paint scenes of the region in their own unique ways.

John Singer Sargent’s Smoke of Ambergris

Portrait master John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) came from an American expatriate family and spent most of his life in Europe, and he also enjoyed traveling. Sargent’s tour of North Africa resulted in several studies of local culture, with a particularly striking Tangier scene completed in 1880 and titled Fumée d’Ambre Gris or Smoke of Ambergris.

In Sargent’s work, a Moroccan woman stands before an incense burner, her gaze focused on the scented smoke wafting upward as she covers herself from public view. Unlike many romanticized Orientalist paintings, the woman is fully clothed and not excessively sensual; she has both poise and a kind of watchful wariness. The painting includes the richer colors of the tiles and rug beneath the incense burner, along with the ornate details of the burner itself, but Sargent‘s prevailing white tones make the woman and her integrity the focal point of the scene.

Willard Metcalf’s Street Scene, Tangier

Willard Leroy Metcalf (1858-1925) was born in Massachusetts and would ultimately become one of the Ten, a group of painters who wanted to create a uniquely American style of Impressionism. Metcalf is best known for his seasonal views of New England, but before settling into that artistic niche, he traveled to Europe and North Africa. Metcalf visited Tangier shortly after his Academie Julian studies in Paris and subsequent time in Giverny, at an artist’s colony not far from Claude Monet’s home.

Metcalf’s 1887 Street Scene, Tangiers offers a calm glimpse of a child, two men and other shrouded figures going about their daily business. A few years earlier, Metcalf had financed his trip abroad with money earned from a magazine assignment to produce illustrations of the Native American Zuni tribe. His illustrations were praised for their naturalist style, an effect which also underlies Metcalf’s Street Scene, Tangiers.

No one in the painting is overly dramatic or caricatured, and the view itself is skillfully divided into part-shade and part-sun. Beyond the people, Tangier’s distinctive architecture is shown beneath a square of cloudless blue sky. Another now-lost painting from this visit, The Arab Market, earned Metcalf an Honorable Mention at the Paris Salon.

Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Gateway, Tangier

The son of a former slave and a prominent African-American minister, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) struggled with racism in the United States before making France his permanent home. Tanner’s best-known works involve Biblical or genre-related subjects, and he took his first trip to Palestine in 1897, to view firsthand what he was trying to effect in his religious works.

Subsequent travel by Tanner to Morocco led him to paint Gateway, Tangier in 1912. Tanner was reportedly intrigued by this entry point leading to Tangier’s older Casbah section, finding the adherence to traditional dress and customs to be of great inspiration. Conversely, Tanner used a more modern, lighter palette and expressive brushstrokes to create his view of the gateway, suffusing the scene with blues, pale greens and violets and making it seem almost dream-like.

August Macke’s In the Bazaar

August Macke (1887-1914) was a German Expressionist painter and member of the early 20th century artistic group known as Der Blaue Reiter. Another member of Der Blaue Reiter was artist Paul Klee, who made a trip with Macke to Tunisia in the spring of 1914. Already wonderfully skilled with color, Macke produced a vibrant series of paintings during this Tunisian visit.

In Macke’s Tunisian works, prism-like forms create unique impressions of the area. In paintings such as In the Bazaar, merchants gather with their goods before a precisely-composed yet fluid backdrop of intense, beautiful colors. Beyond these stunning Tunisian watercolors, Macke also designed Arab-influenced embroidery patterns for his wife to reproduce onto fabric.

Sadly, however, this was all part of a final burst of glory on Macke’s part, as he was soon drafted into the German army and sent to the front lines of World War I. He died during combat in September of 1914, just a few months after returning from his remarkable Tunisian tour.

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The copyright of the article Visions of Morocco and Tunisia in Modern Art History is owned by Meg Nola. Permission to republish Visions of Morocco and Tunisia in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.