Abstract
Today, we are going to talk about Orientalist painting. In this way, I'm going to present you the general aspects of that kind of painting: its historical context, its specificities, its recurrent themes, its criticisms and finally its decline. Throughout this presentation, I will try to show you several Orientalist paintings, so that you can have a more precise idea of what this artistic movement is. Until the middle of the 17th century, the main link between the East and the West was trade. It is only at the end of the 17th century and in the whole 18th century that the European interest for the East really aroused. At that time, Europeans had a huge fancy for what is called in French ‘les turqueries'_ that is to say works of Oriental inspiration, at that time it mainly imitates the Oriental designs. It could be found for instance in domains like painting, literature, theatre, clothing or ornament. We can see it for instance in Boucher's L'odalisque brune (1) which represents a naked woman in a setting that wants to look Oriental. We can see that with the blue cloth, the low table at the left, the jewels, and the feathers on her head... Boucher tried to make of an ordinary Western woman (his wife) an odalisque.
