Ingres, Turkish Bath                                       Sylvia Sleigh, The Turkish Bath

Sylvia Sleigh followed in the lead of many feminist who attempted to turn the sexist male gaze around upon itself. She chose to parody Ingres’ famous image of a harem of available women, exotic visual candy for nineteenth-century men, by painting an image of nude men also at leisure. Some of her men return the viewer’s gaze much in the same way as Ingres’ women. At the same time, Sleigh is mocking the powerless position into which women have traditionally been placed by portraying leading art critics in the role of passive nudes.