Henri Matisse — Blue Odalisque

Another entry in Matisse's Nice-period Odalisque series. The word "odalisque" originally referred to a woman who served in the royal household of an Islamic court, but in the West the term took on an erotic cast, and European painters tackling the subject typically rendered it as a nude. To set the scene, Matisse arranged a folding screen in a corner of his apartment to evoke an Islamic interior—a look drawn from memories of his earlier travels through Algeria and Morocco. At the same time, he added a gold necklace and a skirt, softening the painting so it wouldn't read as purely a nude.