The undated painting Au harem by the Vienna-born Orientalist painter Rudolf Ernst (1854–1932) depicts two young women in an interior with three coloured stucco and glass windows in the upper part of a recess: the central window, showing the motif of a stylized cypress tree, is flanked by two windows with the motif of stylized flowers in a vase with a red and green body, red handles, and a red and green neck.

Not only the arrangement of the three stucco and glass windows depicted in this painting by Rudolf Ernst, but also their motifs and colours, particularly the green- and red-coloured vases, strongly resemble the windows in a chromolithograph by the French Orientalist, Egyptologist, archaeologist, and journalist Émile Prisse d’Avennes (1807–1879) (IG_31), which was reproduced in his L’Art arabe d’après les monuments du Kaire: depuis le VIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe, published in four volumes between 1869 and 1877.
Ernst also included a similar type of stucco and glass window with a stylized red and green vase of flowers in other Orientalist paintings: in A Moor Robing after the Bath (IG_141), the window is partly visible in the background of the painting. Another example is his painting Tending the Lamp (oil on panel, 61 × 48cm, Sotheby’s (2018): The Orientalist Sale (Sale L18100), 24 April 2018, London, lot 14), where two windows with the motif of stylized flowers in a red and green vase are depicted on the left. The impact of Prisse d’Avennes’s chromolithograph (IG_31) cannot only be seen in works by Rudolf Ernst, but also, for example, in the painting Rüstem Pasha Mosque Istanbul by Jean-Léon Gérôme (IG_149).

Further literature:
Haja, & Wimmer, 2000, p. 229.