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Accession #	69.43
Artist	William Merritt Chase
Title	The Moorish Warrior
Date	ca. 1878
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	59 3/16 × 94 7/16 in., 147 lb. (150.4 × 239.9 cm, 66.68kg) frame: 72 1/2 × 106 3/8 × 4 1/2 in. (184.2 × 270.2 × 11.4 cm)
Credit Line	Gift of John R.H. Blum and Healy Purchase Fund B
Location	Visible Storage: Case 24, Screen L (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: The lush tapestries, glimmering metalwork, and contemplative warrior in this picture illustrate William Merritt Chase’s imagined view of daily life in the Middle East. To create this picture for a German patron, the American-born, Munich-trained Chase embraced Realist techniques popularized in Europe, as evidenced by his careful treatment of texture and light. Chase never traveled to the Middle East and instead fabricated the entire scene in the studio using a model and props.

This image and others nearby reveal a tendency in nineteenth-century Western art to project Eurocentric fictitious and exoticizing views onto Middle Eastern subject matter.