Reclining Odalisque

It is a staged photograph, part of the series that the artist dedicated to the recreation of exotic inspired scenes of the Middle East.

[1] Gordon Baldwin considers this "one of the very best of his Orientalist pictures, transcending the limits of the genre to produce a touching and vulnerable portrait of the woman".

She is dressed in a Turkish inspired exotic manner, wearing a unbuttoned blouse, who allows a glimpse of one of her breasts, and harem-style pants, while she is barefoot.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art website states that "The odalisque is simply there, a vision floating in darkness: the exquisite embodiment of Victorian fascination with the exotic and the erotic.

"[1] Gordon Baldwin compares this picture with a similar depiction by Moulin, taken in Algeria, probably in 1856: "Although Fenton's model is also barefooted, she is languorously stretched out alone on her divan, one arm draped lazily over a table drum, the other along the couch.