Almehs playing Chess in a Cafe by Jean-Léon Gérôme

This refined work of art is fully part of the Orientalism trend, a major academic movement of the late nineteenth century. The famous painter Gérôme Jean-Léon excels in representing the daily life of oriental women within intimate interior spaces. The painting entitled “Almehs playing Chess in a Cafe” depicts a moment of leisure and intellectual concentration with great poetic sensitivity. This composition testifies to the artist’s taste for exoticism and finely constructed genre scenes.

In a large room of an Egyptian cafe with dark brick walls, two women are settled in the foreground. One of them, seated on the left on a turned wooden cage, wears a bright yellow dress and holds a long wooden pipe. Opposite her, a young woman wearing a blue veil is seated on an identical cage. The two players attentively observe a chessboard placed on a small cage positioned between them. Behind them, a standing man wearing an orange turban leans over to follow the course of the game. Several other customers smoke or chat in the darkness of the background. A powerful beam of light crosses the room.

The artist’s technical virtuosity is fully expressed in the treatment of contrasted light and the brilliance of the yellow dress. His absolute mastery of oil allows him to contrast the realism of raw architecture with the delicacy of female faces. This admirable work highlights the painter’s sense of detail and color harmony.