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Romanticism - III
Orientalism

Orientalism

 

In art history, literature and cultural studies, orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world (or "Orient") by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East, was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.

Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term 'Orientalism' to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies. In Said's analysis, 'the West' essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced in the service of imperial power. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior. This allows 'Western imagination' to see 'Eastern' cultures and people as both alluring and a threat to Western civilization.

Jean-François Portaels
1818 – 1895

Jean-François Portaels or Jan Portaels (3 April 1818 – 8 February 1895) was a Belgian painter of genre scenes, biblical stories, landscapes, portraits and orientalist subjects. He was also a teacher and director of the Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent and the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He is regarded as the founder of the Belgian Orientalist school. He was praised in his time as the premier painter of 'everyday elegance and feminine grace'. Through his art, teaching and his leadership of the Académie Royale in Brussels he exerted an important influence on the next generation of Belgian artists, including his pupil Théo van Rysselberghe.
 

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Self-portrait

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Oriental Beauty

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Oriental Beauty

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Oriental Beauty

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Oriental Woman

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Jew woman from Tangier

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Oriental Beauty

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Portrait of a Young Girl with a Mask

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Oriental Woman

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Oriental Woman

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Portrait of a Young Girl 

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Portrait of a Young Moroccan Woman

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The Tambourine Player in Repose

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Young Arab Woman from Tanger 

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Young Girl 

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Idyll

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Jewish Woman from Cairo

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Odalisque

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The slave market

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Oriental Woman

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Southern Fair

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The new jewels





 

Theodore Chasseriau
1819 - 1856 

Théodore Chassériau (September 20, 1819 – October 8, 1856) was a Dominican-born French Romantic painter noted for his portraits, historical and religious paintings, allegorical murals, and Orientalist images inspired by his travels to Algeria. Early in his career he painted in a Neoclassical style close to that of his teacher Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, but in his later works he was strongly influenced by the Romantic style of Eugène Delacroix. He was a prolific draftsman, and made a suite of prints to illustrate Shakespeare's Othello. The portrait he painted at the age of 15 of Prosper Marilhat makes Chassériau the youngest painter exhibited at the Louvre museum.

 

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A self-portrait of Chassériau painted at the age of 16

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Andromeda and the Nereids
1840

 

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Desdemona Retiring to her Bed
1849

 

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The Toilet of Esther
1841

 

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Medea about to Kill her Children
1846-50

 

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Orientalist Interior: Nude in a Harem
1850-52

 

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Sappho Leaping into the Sea from the Leucadian Promontory
c. 1840

 

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The Tepidarium
1853

 

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Vénus marine dite Vénus Anadyomène
1838

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Study of a Man
1832

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Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Witches on the Heath
1855

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Othello and Desdemona in Venice
1850

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Scene in the Jewish Quarter of Constantine
1851

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Adèle et Aline Chassériau
1843

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Danseuses mauresques
1849

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Odalisque

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Young Moorish Woman Nursing Her Child
1850

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Woman and girl from Constantine with a gazelle

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Scène de Harem, Femme Mauresque à sa toilette





 

Jean-Leon Gerome
1824 - 1904

Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." His range of his works includes historical paintings, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits, and other subjects. He is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was also a teacher with a long list of students.

 

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Gérôme with Emma Dupont, the model for Omphale
c. 1885

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The Slave Market
c. 1866

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The Cock Fight
1846

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Greek Interior
1848

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Slave Market in Rome
c. 1884

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King Candaules of Lydia
1859

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Pollice Verso
1872

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Pool in a Harem
c. 1876

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Snake Charmer
c. 1879

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Duel after a Masked Ball
1857

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Ave Caesar! Morituri te Salutant
1859

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The Artist and His Model
1890
Dahesh Museum of Art; Gérôme depicts himself sculpting Tanagra, likely from model Emma Dupont, with Pygmalion and Galatea in the background.

 

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Pygmalion and Galatea
1969

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Pygmalion and Galatea
c. 1890

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La fin de séance (The End of the Session)
1886

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Self-portrait, painting The Ball Player
1902

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Truth Coming Out of Her Well
1896

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Mendacibus et histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma Veritas
(The nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors
1895)

 

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Truth is at the Bottom of the Well
1895

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Buying A Slave
1857

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A Roman Slave Market
c. 1884

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The Slave Market
1871

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Phryne Before the Areopagus (detail)
1861
A depiction of Phryne, a famous hetaera (courtesan) of Ancient Greece, being disrobed before the Areopagus. Phryne was on trial for profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries, and is said to have been disrobed by Hypereides, who was defending her, when it appeared the verdict would be unfavourable. The sight of her nude body apparently so moved the judges that they acquitted her. Some authorities claim that this story is a later invention.

 

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Anacreon, Bacchus, and Eros
1848

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The Slave Market
1871

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Michelangelo Being Shown the Belvedere Torso
1849

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An Idyll (Daphnis and Chloe)
1858

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Diogenes
1860

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The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer
1863

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Napoleon in Egypt
c. 1863

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Evening Prayer, Cairo
1865

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Heads of the Rebel Beys at the Mosque of El Hasanein, Cairo
1866

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Cleopatra and Caesar
1866

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The Death of Caesar
1867

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The Execution of Marshal Ney
1868

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The Harem in the Kiosk
c. 1870–1875

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Femme circassienne voilée, or Veiled Circassian Beauty
1876

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The Dance of the Almeh
1863

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Bonaparte Before the Sphinx
1867 - 1868

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Moorish Bath
1870

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The Large Pool of Bursa
1885

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Moorish Bath
1885

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The Bathers
1889

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The Wailing Wall
1880

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The Antique Pottery Painter: Sculpturæ vitam insufflat pictura (painting breathes life into sculpture)
1893

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Leda and the Swan
1895






 

Maria Fortuny
1838 - 1874

Marià Josep Maria Bernat Fortuny i Marsal (June 11, 1838 – November 21, 1874), known more simply as Marià Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny, was the leading Spanish painter of his day, with an international reputation. His brief career encompassed works on a variety of subjects common in the art of the period, including the Romantic fascination with Orientalist themes, historicist genre painting, military painting of Spanish imperial expansion, as well as a prescient loosening of brush-stroke and color.
 

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Self portrait 

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The Odalisque
1861

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The Odalisque
1862

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Fantasy about Faust

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Hindu snake charmers

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The Tapestry Seller
1870

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Carmen Bastian
c. 1871

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African Beach
c. 1867

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The Nude on Portici Beach

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The Odalisque

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A Moroccan woman in traditional dress

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Arab husband

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Portrait of a woman

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