Lot 61: WILLIAM CLARKE WONTNER, (British, 1879 - 1925)

signed and dated W Wontner 1901 (lower left); also inscribed on a label attached to the backboard on the reverse: 'Then stole I up, and trancedly Gazed on the Persian girl alone, Serene with argent-lidded eyes Amorous, and lashes like rays Of darkness, and a brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony, In many a dark delicious curl, Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone; The sweetest lady of the time, Well worthy of the golden prime, Of good Haroun Alraschid.' oil on canvas 66 by 44in. 167.6 by 111.8cm. The subject of Wontner's 1901 painting comes from The Thousand and One Nights, otherwise known as Arabian Nights Entertainments. These were first known in Europe in the early eighteenth century; there followed a succession of translations from the Arabic which ranged from the salacious or outright indecent through to the heavily bowdlerized. The figure of H-run Ar-Rashid, caliph of old Baghdad, and referred to in the last line of the quoted verse, appears in many of the tales. He was in fact an historical figure, living in the eighth century and ruling over a territory which extended from the Indian border to the Arabian gulf. The most famous version of the Thousand and One Nights, and which caused intense interest in the later years of the nineteenth century (and from which the lines of verse attached to the present painting have been taken), was that made by Sir Richard Burton, one time British consul in Damascus but also intrepid traveler and adventurer in Africa, South America, and Asia, and in addition to a prodigious linguist. His audacious and unexpurgated version of the tales appeared in 1885-8. Wontner's The Persian Girl represents the genre of the Oriental female figure presented in an alluring way and within a calculatingly exotic setting. The figure is loosely dressed and holding an ivory-inlaid stringed instrument. She looks expectantly toward the spectator. She is perhaps intended as a denizen of the harem, and certainly the richly furnished chamber that sh