This painting represents a young woman named Masouba from Colomb-Béchar—an oasis in the Algerian Sahara about 400 miles south of Oran. George Baer was intrigued by Masouba because she was of both Jewish and Muslim parentage. The artist explained that when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain and settled in North Africa “they not only forgot or overlooked all prejudices and differences of religious beliefs, but worked and lived together and also intermarried. There was not the slightest vestige of segregation of Jews as prevailed in most of North Africa.”

Born in Chicago, George Baer and his brother Martin attended the Art Institute of Chicago until 1919, studied at the National Academy in Munich, Germany, and then proceeded to Paris. Masouba reflects the various influences that shaped George’s style, including El Greco, Eugène Delacroix, Chaim Soutine, and other modernist forms of expressionism that the artist encountered in Germany and Paris. George and Martin Baer achieved recognition together when a group of paintings they had executed in Morocco and Algeria in 1925 were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in 1926. The brothers returned to North Africa in 1927 and lived in Colomb-Béchar. Their second successful series of North African subjects was exhibited at the Galerie Jeune Peinture, Paris, in 1928. Neither George nor Martin was ever able to repeat the critical acclaim of their North African subjects.