The Slave Market (ca 1873-1875) by Gyzis NikolaosNational Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Orientalism, the nostalgia for the Orient, the cult of the exotic and extravagant, is part of the pathology of Romanticism. The Orient excited the artists’ imagination and fired their passions.
Middle Easterner with Pipe (ca 1873) by Gyzis NikolaosNational Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
In addition to Delacroix, who was inspired in many paintings by the Orient, a large number of French academic romanticism painters specialized in oriental subject matter. German Orientalism, although it lacked French ebullience, had similar characteristics.
Funeral Flowers (1901) by Lytras NikephorosNational Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
The joint trip of Nikephoros Lytras and Nikolaos Gysis to Asia Minor in 1872 took the character of a return to roots.
Turkish Woman at Coffee Time by Savvidis SymeonNational Gallery of Greece - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
Symeon Savvidis (1859 - 1927), who actually came from Asia Minor, painted orientalist scenes, inspired by his repeated trips to his fatherland, in which he captures the atmosphere, the light and the profuse color of the Orient.
It is of course difficult to draw a clear line between Greek genre painting and Orientalism, as the scenes of everyday life in Greece hadas their natural décor the context of a countryside life, which still bore a strong oriental flavor.
Theodoros Rallis (1852 - 1909), a pupil of the French orientalist Jean-Leon Gérôme (1824 - 1904), is the most genuine Greek orientalist. He had a dual vantage point: as a Greek, he explored Greek orientalist subjects with a greater understanding but at the same time he couldn’t help seeing them like an academic painter of the French School.
Texts: Marina Lampraki-Plaka, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, ex-Director, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Athens
Project leader: Efi Agathonikou, Head of Collections Department, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Athens
Images: Stavros Psiroukis & Thalia Kimpari, Photographic Studio, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Athens
Digital curation: Dr. Alexandros Teneketzis, Art Historian & Marina Tomazani, Art Historian, Curator, National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum
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