A guide to Orientalism in 19th-century art

In an art-historical sense, Orientalism is the depiction of the ‘East’ by Western artists. European painters of the 19th century — from England, France and Germany especially — visited the areas we now know as the Near East, Middle East and North Africa, and depicted what they saw in wide-eyed curiosity and admiration. Their paintings and works on paper tapped into a growing fascination with travel and distant, unfamiliar lands, which had previously been beyond the comprehension of most Europeans.

The origins of Orientalism coincided with the Romantic era, and its biggest star was Eugène Delacroix. In works such as Massacre at Chios (1824), The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) and The Convulsionists of Tangier (1837-38), he depicted the East as a place of unbridled sensuality, wilful violence and extreme emotions.

Over time, however, visions became much less tumultuous and much more beguiling. Genre scenes became the norm, reflecting everyday life in these distant lands. Subjects — usually looking relaxed and content — included rug merchants, men at prayer, hookah smokers, chess players, traders and bustling markets.

French artists Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gérôme, the British painter John Frederick Lewis, the Germand and Austrian Gustav Bauernfeind and Ludwig Deutsch are the names that appear at the top of any serious collector’s list.

Painted during Deutsch’s first trip to Egypt in 1883, The Answer (below) is a masterpiece of observation and meticulous execution. While the architectural influences are mainly from Egypt and Damascus, the artist’s eclectic compilation of the individual objects and details is Ottoman: the 18th-century Turkish tombak ewer and basin resting on a 19th-century Syrian mother-of-pearl table; the chieftain wears a beaded Balkan yatagan decorated with chalcedonies strapped tightly in his dusty rose sash, which he wears on an Ottoman gold- and silver-threaded silk robe (aba) topping a white-striped cloak (jubba).

The Franco-Austrian painter Rudolf Ernst was another virtuoso of the genre. Although he never sought ethnographic accuracy, Ernst was master of verisimilitude, creating works so lifelike that patrons felt they could step into them and be transported to the Middle East.

Very broadly speaking, British artists tended to stick to the reality of what they saw before them. David Roberts is a good example: his paintings of people at historical sites are characterised by their topographical precision.

French painters, by contrast, tended to indulge their exotic fantasies more. The harem was common subject matter, even though males weren’t allowed to enter one, and so the artists could never have witnessed such scenes at first hand.

Orientalists tended to paint their canvases in their studios at home in Europe, working from sketches — and later photographs — that they had made while on their travels.

The likes of Ernst and Gérôme also returned to Europe with a host of exotic objects ranging from costumes and rifles to carpets, pipes and tiles. Their studios were piled high with these objects, which served as useful props which they deployed in their paintings.

The alluring exoticism of the East certainly became fashionable among Europe’s elite in the late 19th century, feeding into sculpture, furniture, rugs and carpets, the decorative arts and even architecture. In Britain this taste was perhaps best exemplified in the Arab Hall in the London home and studio of artist Frederic, Lord Leighton, now the Leighton House museum.

‘For much of the 20th century, there wasn’t huge demand, but now it’s strong,’ says Arne Everwijn, Orientalist Art specialist and Christie’s Middle East director of business development. ‘Christie’s became the first auction house to establish an Orientalist sale in 1998. In recent times, it has been collectors from the Middle East who have been buying these paintings — as quasi-historical documents. They are interested in acquiring a piece of their homeland’s past.’ The Islamic edict against figurative imagery meant that local artists didn’t produce equivalent scenes.