To understand the Sargent’s attraction towards Arabia, we should begin with the book that seduced him with colored descriptions of the land’s charms and exoticism: the Arabian Nights. As one of Sargent’s favorite books (Kilmurray and Ormond 18), the Nights greatly molded the artist’s view of the Middle East, coloring his perception with titillating stories of the voyages of Sinbad, the adventures Aladdin and his wish granting genie, Ali Baba’s dangerous encounter with the forty thieves, and more (Tales from the Thousand and One Nights). The tales, of course, did not fool Sargent into believing they 
represented reality; more important than the veracity of these tales was their colorful descriptions that evoke mystery and fantasy, and ignite the imagination. It was the Nights’ “glamour… [its] marvel of miracles and the gorgeousness and magnificence of scenery” that Sargent found enticing (qtd. Musawi 10). By painting Arabia in such bewitching colors with its language, Arabian Nights conjures up a fantasy world where one’s whims and desires are perhaps as possible as flying carpets and magic genies. While in reality flying carpets and magic genies are wistful illusions, in a romantic land colored so deeply and so richly there nevertheless lay hope and freedom. Hope that in a majestic land, one’s wants can be achieved and freedom that in a faraway land, one can “escape from the convention-bound society” (qtd. Thornton 13). It is this temptation of freedom and hope that the Arabian Nights offers that draws Sargent to Arabia; it is the colorful language with which the Nights conveys this temptation that empowers Sargent to produce such colorful paintings.
Images from top to bottom: “Arabian Peninsula.” Online Image. Wikipedia. 5 January 2006. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ev3240_S2000062090456.jpg
Zipes, Jack, ed. The Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights. New York: Signet Classics, 1991. Cover.