French, 'A Struggle in a Desert', 19th century

The violent scene in this small Orientalist painting is an example of an imagined view of the Middle East. It depicts a white woman being attacked by a Middle-Eastern man who wears a turban. The dagger in his raised right hand points down directly towards her as he clasps her waist with his left arm. Her head is thrown back, exposing her throat as she raises her left arm to defend herself. Another man lies dead in front of them, his turban having fallen from his head.

This small unsigned picture probably dates from the early nineteenth century. We do not know who painted it, but it was previously credited to Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), who was a pioneer of Orientalist painting in France. Orientalism – the imagined view by Europeans of the cultures within a region spanning from Turkey to the Middle East and North Africa - reached its peak in the nineteenth century. Like many other painters and writers of this tradition, the construction of a monolithic ‘East’ in their works expressed both the desires and the delusions of the Western world.

Orientalist art often evoked a fantasy of escape, as in the depictions of harems or exoticised interiors. It also carries imperialist undertones. Scenes of brutality, violence and cruelty perpetrated on white people by imaginary villains of Middle-Eastern or African descent were particularly popular. Made in the age of Europe’s colonial expansion, such paintings could serve as political propaganda. For example, in the 1830s after France colonised Algeria, Eugène Delacroix completed several of his major Orientalist pictures.

Decamps’s paintings are often characterised by dramatic action and striking contrasts of light and dark. This picture may also be a reference to a sixteenth-century painting, possibly Italian.