Once again, we have Jean-Léon Gérôme giving us his version of people and places in the “Orient.”

In the case of The Standing Bearer, Unfolding the Holy Flag, the person is probably meant to represent a Tuareg person. The Tuareg people were, and are, pastoralists from North and West Africa, including Libya, southern Algeria, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. The guy looks pretty well-armed, and the reason for this is that he’s not just standing there holding the flag looking like a bad-ass, he’s actually supposed to represent a guardian at the entrance of the shrine behind him.

The Tuaregs had controlled the trans-Saharan trade routes, which ran from the cities in the southern desert to the coast of the Mediterranean, for centuries. This is no doubt one of the reasons that they fought against colonization by the French; this led to the killings of French explorers as well as three French missionaries in 1875. By the time this was painted in 1876, Gerome and his potential buyers would likely have been aware of those events, but it’s unknown if that affected the sale price. It sold in 1878 for 6,000 francs.

The building is more likely to be a shrine, rather than a mosque, due to the presence of the textile hanging on the door. However, since this scene is probably born out of Gerome’s imagination, rather than observation, even though he did travel to the Middle East as well as Northern Africa, including Algeria, where he may have seen a Tuareg person. The Tuareg people were not urban dwellers, so he might have seen the building, used it as the background, and added the man guarding it to complete the scene.

Gerome’s art is well known for the details he includes in clothing, architecture, and assorted accessories, especially in his Orientalist work. In The Standing Bearer, the guard would not have been armed with a bow and arrows, simply because these items were not your typical Tuareg weapon of choice; they were, however, one of the many props Gerome kept in his studio.  The artist also equipped the man in Prayer at the Sultan's Tomb with the same bow and arrows; they are also visible hanging on the wall in The Artist’s Model (which is very similar to The Artist and his Model). In addition, what looks to be the same flag that The Standing Bearer is holding is leaning against the wall in Gerome’s studio.

Another weapon the man is carrying is a short-handled sword tucked into a silahlik, a weapons belt that was worn throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond. The sword itself is of Turkish origin, called a yatagan; this one is also part of Gerome’s extensive collection of props that he picked up during his travels, possibly in Istanbul or Bursa, two cities he is known to have visited. As for the flag, which is mainly green (the traditional color of Islam) with writing on it, he probably picked it up on one of his trips to this part of the world.

With all of the items Gerome brought home from his travels, he was able to recreate, or at least re-imagine, the people and places he saw that were outside of the average European’s (or American’s, for that matter) comfort zone. The Standing Bearer is a good example of this, as is something like The Grand Bath at Bursa, which may have shocked many. They were probably so shocked that they stood in line to see it again.