An Egyptian Pot Seller at Gizeh

The gaze is direct and confident. The woman puts her body on display, but as a viewer you are also confronted with your own desire to look: your desire is exposed too. Danish nineteenth-century art rarely gets more sensuous than Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann’s depiction of an Egyptian pot seller. The woman adopts an inviting, relaxed pose, her naked body faintly visible under the thin silk. The densely colourful rug and shiny jewellery are painted with a fine feel for surfaces and materiality. In 1869–1870 and 1874–1875 the artist visited Constantinople, and the sights she saw there became a rich reservoir of artistic subject matter. During the first trip she visited Egypt in 1870 and became fascinated by the pottery sellers on the Nile. Jerichau-Baumann was an outsider on the Danish art scene of her day. She was a woman, of Polish-German descent, and had an international education. And whereas most other artists in Denmark were preoccupied with portraying the nation’s most distinctive traits, she was interested in all things cosmopolitan and – in the eyes of Danish audiences of the time – foreign (50 Favorites in the SMK Collection).