After Napoleon had made the lands south of the Mediterranean more easily accessible to would-be travellers, many artists made use of the opportunity to find more exotic motifs. French and English artists went in increasing numbers to countries such as Egypt and Morocco, and the many portrayals of harems and bazaars became popular and were easy to sell to buyers in the artists’ respective homelands. Here, however, we are far away from harems and other profane subjects in the sober portrayal of the harbour in Algiers by the English watercolourist William Wyld.
