Meditation on Gallery 804


 

Jean Leon Gerome painted this wonderful picture titled Bashi-Barouk in 1868 after returning to Paris from a trip to Egypt and other Middle East countries.   The Met owns a number of painting by Gerome from this period including this one of a mosque


These paintings were done in Paris after he returned from his travels.  Presumably he made many sketches while traveling and based the paintings on these.  The identity of the model who is depicting a soldier, probably a mercenary,  was someone, probably an African,  living in Paris who Gerome dressed in various textiles he brought back from the Middle East.

These paintings demonstrate the fascination with the Middle and Far East that swept Europe and America in the latter part of the nineteenth century.  The vivid clothing and different cultures were on intense interest and were used in contemporary clothing and decor.  The East was seen a both exotic and erotic.

According to the Met The Orient—including present-day Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa—exerted its allure on the Western artist’s imagination centuries prior to the turn of the nineteenth century. Figures in Middle Eastern dress appear in Renaissance and Baroque works by such artists as Bellini, Veronese, and Rembrandt, and the opulent eroticism of harem scenes appealed to the French Rococo aesthetic. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meditations on No Gallery

Image
 The Met has many art works that are not on display at any given moment.  Some of them rotate in a regular basis and some rarely.  This work titled Rooftops, Brooklyn by Fidelia Bridges is one seen rarely. Bridges was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1834 but moved to New York as a young woman.  She worked as a governess for a wealthy family and they thought so much of her talent that they paid for her to go to Art School in Philadelphia and when she finished they provided her a studio in their home in Brooklyn where she could work.  Although she was quite successful during her life and was compared to the much  better known Winslow Homer, after her death in 1923 she was almost completely forgotten.  The Met does have several of her works as do some other museums but unfortunately they are rarely exhibited.   She worked often in watercolor and her delicate works of gardens and flowers are lovely.  Her works of urban buildings were done when su...
Read more

Meditations on Gallery 556

Image
 European Decorative Arts and Sculpture from 1850-1900. This wonderful French Art Deco fireplace surround caught my eye immediately when I entered the gallery.  It's made of glazed stoneware ceramic that is supposed to be very durable and fire proof.  The swirls cast you into a dream like state and the colors are vivid.  The face of the mask in the central medallion are mesmerizing. I began to imagine the kind of dwelling in which such a fireplace would have been housed.   Surely a castle like structure, not an ordinary house.  It would take a huge room to display it adequately.  It would have to have been placed at one end of room that you entered from the other end so its magnificence could be seen at first glance.  It would have dominated any room.  Although the stately rooms of this period did not contain a lot comfy furniture I can still imagine sitting before a blazing fire on a cold night and sipping a cup of China tea or a glass of re...
Read more

More meditations on Gallery 207

Image
 Because the Met is a living institution things don't always stay the same and exhibits change.  This long narrow gallery contains art from China but has several works I did not see the last time I was here.  This Tang dynasty horse and groom is one. The Tang dyasty from the seventh century to the ninth is one of the great flowering of artistic work of the world.  It was a period of cultural  growth, a golden period in Chinese history.   During this period the Chinese empire stretched from the Korean Penisula almost to Afganistan.  Art and poetry flourished.  Painting and calligraphy were important. The development of three color glazed ceramics like the horse above are a hallmark of the period.. There was also a rise in Buddhism during this period. Modern day Xi'An was the capital and it was a trading center for all of Asia.  Politically during this period the civil service exams that took the best and brightest young men from all classes to...
Read more