Gyula Tornai (1861-1928) was born in Hungary and studied in Vienna, Munich and Budapest. He started out painting scenes of everyday life around him, but then embarked on a series of exotic foreign painting trips to Morocco, India, China and Japan. His themes changed to reflect what he saw there. His success as a selling artist financed his travels.
Although some of his paintings, especially of women, are rather self-consciously exotic and mildly erotic, many seem to attempt to show people and life as they really were, in his far-flung destinations.