Harem Venuses: Before Punishment by Franz Eisenhut

Before Punishment (1890)

The harem was a very popular subject with Victorian period painters, offering, as it did, an opportunity to depict sensuously abandoned looking women but with an historical or ethnic justification.  Naked dancers, women bathing and women smoking were all lasciviously depicted by artists keen to feed the public fascination as to what really went on in those mysterious eastern harems.  This example, Before Punishment (sometimes known as Before the Verdict) includes two sinuously stretched out women with an added S&M element, as both are locked in wooden stocks around their ankles.  One is white and redheaded (the Victorians were fascinated by white slaves taken into harems) and the other dusky.  What have they been up to to be punished?  The stocks appear again in the same artist's picture, Captive in the Harem.

Captive in the harem

Both were painted by Austro-Hungarian (born in Novo Palanka, in what is now Serbia) artist Franz Eisenhut (1857-1903).  His father wanted him to become a merchant but a Hungarian painter spotted his drawing talent and prominent citizens of his home town collected money to fund his studies in Budapest and Munich. He travelled in the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus and became an orientalist painter, principally.

Venus in Black Stockings 1: Im Boudoir by Károly Teuchert

Im Boudoir (1922) 

Back to the nineteen twenties for this painting by Hungarian painter Károly Teuchert (1886-1924),  It has been virtually impossible to find out anything about the artist, apart from the fact that he studied in Budapest and at the Academy of Fine arts in Munich. Is the leggy lady ddepicted in this painting dressing or undressing? She looks wistfully at her clothes but her pose doesn't indicate any discomfort with her state. Perhaps she is a woman who well knows the power of her body. This painting was sold in 2010 for nearly $4,500 but Teuchert nudes have gone for as much as $11,000.

Teuchert painted a number of nudes in the nineteen twenties. This second boudoir painting, from the same year, features a maid drying her mistress' foot while the lady admires herself in the mirror. There is all manor of gentle sensuality in this one.  The mistress gazes at her reflection with satisfaction while the maid regards her foot with, almost, adoration.

Here is a splendid rear view, with the lady caught in direct sunlight flooding the room.  Her face isn't visible as the painting is all about that illuminated bottom and back, as she lies in a seemingly rumpled bed.

Nude with cat (1926) 

This one was one of his last paintings, done in 1926, the year of his death. The girl sports the newly fashionable short hair of the period. There is no question of any  representation of furniture in this, just a neutral background to display her charms. Is it saying, is this girl's character like her black cat?  Watch out!