Jean Leon Gerome (1824-1904)
Jean Leon Gerome was one of the most famous artists in the first half of the 19th century. He is also one of the first names that comes to our mind when we hear ‘orientalism’. Gerome is important for Turkish art history as some of the most prominent Turkish artists of his era had been his students.
His first visit to İstanbul was in 1853. He revisited İstanbul time and again from 1871 to 1879. He had been invited to make the portraits of Sultan Abdülaziz as well as the prominent intellectual Ahmet Vefik Paşa. Gerome had befriended leading artists of his era such as painter and archaeologist Osman Hamdi Bey who had been his student as well as the first photographers of İstanbul: Abdullah Biraderler (Abdullah Brother or Abdullah Frerers as they would be called in that time) who handed him photos of Topkapı Palace which was not open to public gaze during his visits. He used these photos to create imaginary scenes for his paintings. Gerome was also an important figure in the shaping of the art collection of the Ottoman family and high ranking bureaucrats in the Ottoman Empire.
His paintings of İstanbul during those visits have become some of his most famous paintings. The oriental fantasy’ created around the Ottoman Empire that has been with us for the last century rests on his paintings. Some of these paintings were drawn from real life whereas others were simply figments of his imagination, especially the paintings showing the intimate lives of harem women as no man was allowed to observe the intimate lives of Ottoman women.
Let’s allow Gerome to take us to a half real, half imaginary world in Istanbul in the 19th century!
Harem women feeding pigeons in the courtyard
Palace Terrace
Harem Hammam
Two Women in a Turkish Hammam
Snake Charmer
Note that Edward Said’s famous book titled Orientalism has the Snake Charmer on its cover. Said was extremely critical of Orientalism in his breakthrough book.
At this point let’s pay a tribute to the great master Edward Said who said:
“The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.”
Edward Said and his break through book titled Orientalism
If you are interested in oriental art, here is a video that is about the Najd Collection which includes paintings of Jean Leon Gerort and his student Osman Hamdi Bey! Edward Said would definitely be very critical of the claims in this video positioning orientalist painters as the ‘discoverers’ of the Orient. Said would definitely say that they were ‘creating’ the fantasy of the Orient rather than ‘discovering’ its reality!
