Eugene Delacroix (Romanticism) painted North African women in the early part of the 19th century. Henri Matisse explored the same exotic theme by painting his Odalisque. (His love for fabric would appear in these paintings.) Pablo Picasso (Modern) owned a Matisse and became interested in the same theme in the 1940s. He would later paint "Les Femmes d'Alger" in the mid 1950s. They consisted of 15 paintings, lettered A-O. As Picasso was the last of his peers to pass on, he may have felt obliged to continue in the footsteps of his predecessors. Is the subject "Odalisque" a painting of Mary? Is Mary also Madonna, therefore mother? This is a theory that I find intriguing and one which I will pursue in my writing at another time. Buy Posters Here From AllPosters.com