Fuck Yeah Orientalism

Confidences, 1869

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Veiled Circassian beauty, 1876

Portrait of two sisters from a businessman’s family, Kyoto, Japan. 1911.  REstored and colored by Digital Mix Company of Japan.

Portraits of European women wearing kimono, part of the Japonisme movement, referring to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design in western Europe in the nineteenth century following the reopening of trade of Japan in 1858.

David at the Palace of Saul, 1878

One year earlier, Waterhouse had already made a painting with the same name (see previous post).  This time he chose for an entirely different setting.  With the strange dimensions of the image, enhanced by the long horizontal bench and the resting girl, Waterhouse produced an unusual effect.  The shadows in the foreground and the light shining from the back on the right side of the girl’s face, arms and feet are carefully structured.  On the other hand, well known themes from his previous works, such as the pigeons, flowers and Pompeii-an pillars provide an overall relaxing atmosphere as so often in his early works.

Oil on canvas

Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Grief of the Pasha (1882)

Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers in their Apartment, 1834

source

Frederick Arthur Bridgman - Summer Evening by irinaraquel on Flickr.

Fred Max Bredt, “An Oriental Noble Woman”

Nicaise de Keyser (1854)

Wilhelm Kotarbiński - Cléopâtre

The Moorish Bath Jean-Léon Gérôme (1870) Boston MFA