Reclining Odalisque by Matisse in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 2008

Reclining Odalisque
1926

Object Details

Title: Reclining Odalisque

Artist: Henri Matisse (French, Le Cateau-Cambrésis 1869–1954 Nice)

Date: 1926

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 15 1/8 x 21 5/8 in. (38.4 x 54.9 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967

Accession Number: 67.187.82
This work belongs to a group of paintings from the mid-1920s in which Matisse recalled his experiences in Morocco in 1912 and 1913. During these visits, the painter, like so many tourists before him, witnessed harems and became fascinated with their apparent blend of exoticism and eroticism. Showing a recumbent and seminude woman in a luxurious, inviting, and brightly patterned interior, Reclining Odalisque radiates with an outsider’s rapturous fantasies about the cultural and sexual liberation associated with Morocco.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489640