Orientalist Painting

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour of Valenciennes stands out as an exception in this respect. His extended sojourn in the East provided Vanmour with access to areas that were prohibited to other Europeans. Vanmour’s genre scenes of the domestic interior, particularly the ones depicting the Turkish woman, were widely favored by enthusiastic admirers. Consequently, similar compositions were repeatedly produced in the artist’s studio in İstanbul.

As the paintings centered on the domestic interior reveal, fortune-telling from coffee cups, smoking tobacco pipes, spinning yarn, embroidering, hosting –mostly overnight– guests, and frequenting the hamam were important pastimes in the daily life of Ottoman women. The harem women also enjoyed musical or theatrical entertainment. Practicing music was not confined to the women of the Palace; it was also a widespread pursuit in the palaces, mansions and seaside residences of state officials and Court circles.

Life and the city

Apart from the picturesque or panoramic views, İstanbul also presented intriguing scenes of daily life to foreign artists visiting the Ottoman capital. From the 18th century onwards, genre scenes began to emerge in the works of Western painters and gained further significance through the Orientalists of the 19th century. Venues reflecting the exotic Eastern atmosphere and Ottomans dressed in their original attires stood out as priceless subjects for the Orientalist painters who sought to immortalize the mystifying life of the East on their canvasses. Public areas such as coffee houses, courtyards of mosques, fountains, promenades, and bazaars were ideal sites to observe urban life. In this respect, women were the central focus in the genre scenes of Orientalist painters. As they were forbidden to observe Turkish women in the household, these artists found the opportunity to comfortably study and depict women as they were traveling on koçu carts or aboard the caiques, relaxing at excursion sites, or shopping at the bazaars.
İstanbul’s distinctive geographical location also offered artists the prospect of juxtaposing life at sea against the city’s skyline defined by Ottoman architecture. The works of Western artists reflecting İstanbul life assumed their places in books illustrated with engravings that were published in Europe, enabling a number of local and foreign painters to produce oil copies of these engravings.