Orientalism

Nineteenth-century European painting of North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, as travellers, soldiers and painters imagined them. Delacroix's journey to Morocco in 1832 started a fashion that Gérôme, Fromentin, John Frederick Lewis, Ludwig Deutsch and many others turned into a genre: markets, mosques, desert caravans, harems and baths, painted with dazzling light and minute, often ethnographic detail. Much of it mixes careful observation with fantasy, and its harem scenes in particular reflect European fantasies more than the places themselves.

How to tell it apart: the subject gives it away (turbans, tiles, deserts, minarets), painted with the polish of Academic art and strong Mediterranean light.

1,048 works in the quiz. Play a round on Orientalism.

Artists

Vincent van Gogh · Rembrandt · John Singer Sargent · Eugène Delacroix · Jean-Léon Gérôme · Alexandre Cabanel · Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres · Lawrence Alma-Tadema · Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot · Frédéric Bazille · Victorine Meurent · Francesco Hayez · Émile Bernard · Antoine-Jean Gros · David Roberts · Jules Lefebvre · Hans Makart · Vladimir Borovikovsky · Théodore Chassériau · Edwin Lord Weeks · Charles Gleyre · Fausto Zonaro · Georges Rochegrosse · Rodolfo Amoedo · Gaston Bussière · Nasreddine Dinet · Mariano Fortuny Marsal · John Frederick Lewis · Henri Regnault · Richard Parkes Bonington

Best-known works

“The Kiss” — Francesco Hayez, 1859
“The Turkish Bath” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1862
“Portrait of Maria Ivanovna Lopukhina” — Vladimir Borovikovsky, 1797
“The Babylonian Marriage Market” — Edwin Long, 1875
“Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa” — Antoine-Jean Gros, 1804
“The Spanish Wedding” — Mariano Fortuny Marsal, 1870
“Bonaparte Before the Sphinx” — Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1867
“The Toilette of Esther” — Théodore Chassériau, 1841
“Phaedra” — Alexandre Cabanel, 1880
“Pool in a Harem” — Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1876
“Odalisque à l'esclave” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1839
“Nude Old Man in the Sun” — Mariano Fortuny Marsal, 1871
“Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners” — Alexandre Cabanel, 1887
“Catherine II Strolling in the Park at Tsarskoye Selo” — Vladimir Borovikovsky, 1794
“Arab Saddling his Horse” — Eugène Delacroix, 1855
“Portrait of Prince A.B.Kurakin” — Vladimir Borovikovsky, 1801
“The Lampugnani Conspiracy” — Francesco Hayez, 1826
“Antony and Cleopatra” — Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1883
“The Caliph of Constantine” — Théodore Chassériau, 1854
“The destruction of the temple of Jerusalem” — Francesco Hayez, 1867
“The last Tamoio” — Rodolfo Amoedo, 1883
“The Painter's Children in the Japanese Room” — Mariano Fortuny Marsal, 1874
“Jewish Wedding in Morocco” — Eugène Delacroix, 1839
“The Great Bath at Bursa” — Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1885
“Venus of the sea” — Théodore Chassériau, 1838
“Pope Urban II preaching the first crusade in the square of Clermont” — Francesco Hayez, 1835
“La Toilette” — Frédéric Bazille, 1870
“Ciclo do Ouro” — Rodolfo Amoedo, 1920s
“Alma, playing chess” — Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1870
“Aline Chassériau” — Théodore Chassériau, 1835