Orientalism at the Met

I guess Orientalism is out of the doghouse, since the Met is staging a major exhibition. Above is a famous work in this vein, Prayer in the Mosque by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1874

Something I never saw before, An Egyptian Woman by John Singer Sargent, 1890

A bit of pseudo Islamic decoration by Léon Parvillée and Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, 1874

Architectural Model Based on the Alhambra by Rafael Contreras, which is obscurely date to between 1847 and 1890

Turkish girdle clasp that ended up in the private collection of a rich nineteenth-century American. Worth clicking on the see the detail.

Another famous Gerome, Bashi-Bazouk, 1868. French painters loved this theme, painting "Bashi-Bazouks" as highly exotic, highly paid, very well dressed soldiers. But really Bashi-Bazouks were unpaid irregulars who tagged along with Turkish armies in the hope of plunder, so the poorest and worst dressed men in the army.

The Met tried to redeem their interest in colonially suspect art by featuring Turkish artist Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910). I can't see any difference between his depictions of these scenes and the work of the French artists whose style he was copying. (At the Mosque Door, 1874)

Looks like a wonderful exhibit.