Otherwise Known as Lunch

While poking around Carol Gerten-Jackon’s Virtual Art Museum this afternoon, I came across The Mid-Day Meal, Cairo painted by John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876) one year before his death, most likely from an earlier sketch made during the ten years he spent living in Cairo. I had not heard of him until today during my own mid-day meal, Boston. I immediately fell in love with this painting.

I find this particular work very moving. It is, of course, a quintessentially Orientalist work of art; it depicts 19th-century Cairo as seen by Western eyes, in all its romantic and exotic glory. I would prefer, however, not to overly politicize such a marvelous work as this one. While I recognize the importance of understanding this work in its proper historical context, I cannot help but admire its delicate beauty and the sensuousness of the feast it portrays. I think it is clear that Lewis appreciated and was himself moved by Cairo’s beauty, and he quite successfully draws the viewer into the work itself, to take one's seat on the cushion in the foreground.