Book Description

A fresh look at the ways nineteenth-century European and Ottoman artists portrayed and promoted the Middle East through interpretations and emulations of Islamic art and design. Colonial and imperial expansion, technical advancement, and artistic transformation in the nineteenth century catalysed the global marketplace and sparked a wave of European picture-making focused on North Africa and the Middle East.

Known as Orientalism, the genre inspired by Islamic cultures relied equally on fact and fantasy to create iconic images both celebrated and interrogated today. This book tells a new, multifaceted story, taking into account how major figures ranging from the French painters Ingres, Delacroix, and Gérôme to the Ottoman statesman and artist Osman Hamdi Bey shaped an understanding of their world by incorporating Islamic motifs into their pictures. Addressing manifold questions about ethnic and racial difference, gender, power relations, and colonialist attitudes, the publication reinterprets beloved works of art such as Gérôme’s Bashi-Bazouk and Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque.

Authors uncover that Orientalism was more than a genre of European easel painting by detailing its impact on decorative arts and architecture as well as collecting practices, which inspired a deep admiration for Islamic art and prompted a design revolution with an enduring legacy in Europe and the United States.

Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (June 12, 2026–February 28, 2027)