The reputation of Orientalist painting has taken something of a battering in the past three decades, due to its supposed role in creating stereotypes of Arabs through focusing on subjects such as harems, odalisques, khans, warriors on horseback, camels and slave markets. Not that this has depressed prices, which have been sustained by continuing demand, especially from Middle Eastern buyers. The content of art described as Orientalist actually ranges more widely than the lurid images that are the stuff of stereotypes, and includes for example the invaluable records produced by Scottish artist David Roberts of 19th century Middle Eastern cities and landscapes. Now Orientalist art is enjoying a critical reappraisal, which in London is expressed both by increased activity in the Orientalist art market and by a forthcoming major exhibition at Tate Britain entitled ‘The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting 1830-1925'. The exhibition opens on June 4 and runs until the end of August. It is organized in association with the Yale Center for British Art in the USA, which has the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the UK. The exhibition first opened at the Yale Center, in February, and after its London run it will travel in October to the Pera Museum, Istanbul, after which it will be transferred to the Sharjah Art Museum for the period between February and April 2009. The exhibition is the first to survey the history of British painters' representations of the Middle East from the 17th century to the early years of the 20th century. The heyday of Orientalist art was the 19th century, when steam engines were first used in travel, making it possible for artists to cross the distance to the Middle East easily. They often reached their destination by way of Spain and Morocco, or Greece and the Balkans. There are more than 120 paintings, prints and drawings on show, lent by galleries and private collections around the world. The exhibition features major artists such as William Holman Hunt, Lord Leighton, John Frederick Lewis and Richard Dadd. The latter was a tragic figure who did most of his artwork in a mental hospital where he was incarcerated after killing his father while in the grip of a delusional illness. He had travelled as an artist through Greece, Turkey, and Palestine, before his mental state deteriorated in Egypt. The Dadd work in the exhibition is the 1849-50 painting ‘Flight Out of Egypt'. A major highlight of the exhibition is a panoramic view of the ancient Lebanese city of Baalbek executed by one of the most famous British Orientalist artists, David Roberts. Another work inspired by the region's ancient past is Robert Wood's picture ‘Discovering the Ruins of Palmyra'. John Frederick Lewis, who lived in Cairo for a decade in the mid 19th century, is particularly known for his exquisitely detailed portrayals of interiors, particularly in women's quarters. The exhibition includes his painting ‘Hareem Life, Constantinople' painted in 1857. Also on show is his 1869 work ‘The Seraff – a Doubtful Coin' which depicts two veiled women and a money lender. From the work of William Allan, the exhibition has ‘Slave Market, Constantinople'. The Tate Britain exhibition also explores the way in which British Orientalist painters tried to persuade audiences of authenticity of their work, often by using a high degree of detail in their compositions. At the same time, their work often depended on highlighting the drama and romance of the Orient. These two, sometimes conflicting, impulses towards authenticity and drama often produced a “fascinating tension”, leaving viewers to question the accuracy of the images they saw. The book of the exhibition, edited by Nicholas Tromans, includes essays by Arab and Western writers, among them Rana Kabbani, Fatema Mernissi, Christine Riding and Emily M Weeks. The publisher's blurb says: “This fascinating book will demonstrate that the issues we encounter between Britain and the Islamic world remain as potent today as they were two and a half centuries ago.” The exhibition engages intimately with the debates around the concept of Orientalism, and the representation of the East in Western arts and literature. In the past two years there has been a backlash against some of the theses of the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said in his hugely influential 1978 book “Orientalism”. One of the main critics of Said is the British writer and scholar Robert Irwin whose book “For Lust of Knowing: the Orientalists and Their Enemies” was published in 2006. In the commercial art world, Sotheby's auction house is optimistic over the outlook for its Orientalist sale in London on Friday May 30th. The auction follows Sotheby's successful Orientalist sale in New York on April 18 (as part of a sale of 19th century European art), which realized 8.7 million dollars and saw Jean-Leon Gerome's painting Rustum Pasha Mosque, Istanbul, sell for 1.9 million dollars. The London sale is offering around 90 works with a total pre-sale estimate of between 6.2 million and 8.6 million pounds sterling. They include works by such leading figures as Frederick Arthur Bridgman, Jean-Leon Gerome, Henri Rousseau, Theodore Chasseriau, Rudolf Ernst and John Frederick Lewis. __
