Oriental painting

Browse our collection of oriental painting.

Oriental art is often used in an all-encompassing way and refers to historical and contemporary art from various Central Asian, Oriental and Middle Eastern cultures. As many critics argue, misconceptions about Oriental paintings seem to be a consequence of the Eurocentric view of foreign cultures, which have all been lumped together under one big concept regardless of their particularities. For this reason, art critics today are reluctant to use the term “Oriental art” and suggest replacing it with more specific and localised labels.

Oriental Art

In the nineteenth century, the Orient, including modern-day Turkey, Greece, the Middle East and North Africa, became a popular theme in European art, particularly in academic painting.
The colonisation of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the increasing number of Western travellers to the Near and Middle East and the rise of Romanticism, led to a growing interest in Oriental ways of life in European communities, giving rise to a new genre of painting.

Oriental paintings explored the myth of the Orient and satisfied a demand for exoticism and mystery by focusing on the sensual, eroticised and stereotypical aspects of non-Western cultures. Slaves and slave markets, Bedouin warriors, mosques and nudes in harems are some of the typical subjects depicted in Oriental paintings.

Although Orientalist painting was sidelined in the 20th century, the taste for Orientalism remained in the works of European artists such as Renoir, Matisse, Paul Klee, Kandinsky and many others who all adopted Orientalist themes.