Upcoming Art Auction > Only rarely does an extraordinary Orientalist watercolor appear on the market, and now that time has come. Painted in 1873 by the Englishman John Frederick Lewis, “A Reception in the Harem” has been in a private U.S. collection since 1961, when the current owner bought it from a London dealer. It has never been seen publicly since, and can now be visited by appointment at Bonhams London, which will offer it at auction on March 26, 2025.
JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS’S “A RECEPTION IN THE HAREM”
Bonhams, London
bonhams.com
In her catalogue essay, scholar Emily Weeks says this is a larger version of Lewis’s oil painting now at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Lewis was a master in both oil and watercolor, renowned then and now for jewel-like color and intricate detail. Weeks adds that Lewis “perfected an idiosyncratic approach to watercolor that could rival oil painting in the intensity of its hues (achieved through mixing watercolor pigments with Chinese white)” and in its precise brushstrokes, making it appear as “finished” and laboriously executed as an oil. Blessed with such talents, Lewis “systematically produced two nearly identical versions” of every major scene, one in each medium.
Britons’ fascination with the daily lives of fashionable women in Middle Eastern harems grew from the 18th century onward. The reclining figure on the blue divan at the scene’s center is Lewis’s wife, Marian, and her ornate surroundings were inspired by the reception room of their Cairo home. The Lewises lived in the Egyptian capital for 10 years, and in 1846, no less a tourist than the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray envied Lewis’s “dreamy, hazy, lazy, tobaccofied life” there.
Before it came to America in 1961, this watercolor was owned by a series of well-known connoisseurs and ogled at well-attended exhibitions in 1878, 1887, 1891, and 1898. Because it may go right back into a private collection on March 26, art lovers visiting London this winter are strongly encouraged to go see it at Bonhams.
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