Culture Beards Fashion Dress 1725 to 1799

Having penetrated the Balkans in the fourteenth century, conquered Constantinople in the fifteenth, and reached the gates of Vienna in the sixteenth, the Ottoman Empire long struck fearfulness into European hearts. By the end of the seventeenth century, withal, its expansion had stalled. With the waning of the so-calledTürkengefahr(Turkish threat) and the rising of commercial merchandise facilitated by the nascent European empires, in that location was a major shift in the fashion the Ottomans were represented in European visual and literary civilisation. Over fourth dimension, the Ottoman Empire came to be viewed not every bit an imminent threat but rather every bit an interesting —pardon the anachronism— tourist destination that could be visited and explored, and from where exotic goods could be purchased and taken home as mementos. During the eighteenth century, travel to the Orient became an opportunity for upper-class Europeans to further their education and broaden their culture, a phase in their coming of historic period; and oriental objects became prestige items and prized consumer goods. Turquerie (lit. "Turkish stuff") is a cultural and creative movement that emerged and developed in this context.

In fact goods produced in the Orient, such every bit Ottoman rugs and silk-velvet textiles, had been pop in Europe since earlier times. Indeed such items appear then frequently in Renaissance paintings that certain Anatolian carpets with geometric patterns are at present known as "Holbein rugs" —considering they often appear in the works of the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger (d. 1543)— while sure Aegean carpets with stylized floral designs are chosen "Lotto Rugs" —because they oftentimes appear in the works of the Italian painter Lorenzo Lotto (d. 1556). Ornaments inspired by Standard arabic script (but mostly illegible) have appeared in European painting since the Middle Ages, and in the almost unexpected places, notably the halos of the Christ and the Virgin Mary, and the borders of important clergymen's vestments.

Still, some changes, both qualitative and quantitative, are in prove from the eighteenth century on. Indeed, Turquerie is only one of several —distinct but related— currents that emerged during this menses. Along with such trends every bit Orientalism, Exoticism, Chinoiserie (lit. "Chinese stuff"), Africanism, and Primitivism, Turquerie is just another aspect of European artists' search for inspiration in cultures other than their ain. It is well known that Mozart (d. 1791) drew inspiration from Turkish music in the eighteenth century, Degas (d. 1917) and van Gogh (d. 1890) from Japanese woodcuts and Gauguin (d. 1903) from Polynesian carvings in the nineteenth, and Picasso (d. 1973) from African sculpture, Pound (d. 1972) from Chinese and Japanese poetry, and Stravinsky (d. 1971) from Russian pagan music in the twentieth. Moreover these trends were non limited to "great" artists: from household article of furniture to wallpaper, from glassware to clothing, and from architecture to theater, Europe "consumed" the world during this period non only politically and economically but culturally likewise. To properly appreciate the movement known as Turquerie, information technology is necessary to bear in mind this historical context.

In its first recorded utilise, to describe the miser Harpagon in the comedy50'Avare (1668) by Molière (d. 1673), the term "turquerie" meant "difficult-heartedness" or "cruelty": "What'southward more he is Turkish," Molière wrote, "but of a turquerie to make everyone despair." Later the 1669 visit of the Ottoman ambassador Müteferrika Süleyman Ağa to the French courtroom under King Louis XIV (d. 1715), however, the term became more benign and, with the staging of Molière'southLe Bourgeois gentilhomme the post-obit year, quite facetious: representing the aloof oxymoron "bourgeois admirer," the protagonist Monsieur Jourdain was made a fool of past his girl'south immature suitor Cléonte who put on Turkish garb and passed himself off as the Turkish sultan's son. Equally a effect of the play's popularity, Turkish (or pseudo-Turkish) attire and Turkish (or pseudo-Turkish) themed costume balls became quite trendy. Through this new style, the fascinating unknowability of the Orient was to a caste domesticated, while, on the other manus, it became possible for European authors to criticize the social and political bug in their ain societies past projecting them onto the oriental Other.

Still, equally Alexander Bevilacqua and Helen Pfeifer put information technology, Turquerie "was non solely a European representation of a strange people, just a set of responses to an increment in the movement of Ottoman goods and ideas. The trajectories by which everything from coffee and costumes to music and manuscripts travelled from Ottoman to European lands suggest that Turquerie was a dynamic and multi-histrion phenomenon in which Ottomans played a central role. Ottoman objects did non travel naked: they were wrapped in layers of meaning." ("Turquerie: Culture in Motion, 1650–1750,"Past & Present 221 [2013], pp. 75–76.)

In time, Turquerie became an aesthetic term for anà la mode oriental theme or inspiration in fine art, literature, architecture, furnishings, fashion, masquerade culture, and even cuisine. Yet, when the Fundamental Union of Decorative Arts (Fifty'Wedlock centrale des arts décoratifs) organised an exhibition of eighteenth-century Turquerie in 1911 in Paris, the fine art critic and curator Paul Alfassa ended that the Ottoman influence on the decorative arts had been negligible in comparison to that of Red china, and that "information technology is well-nigh uniquely in painting that we must search for a 'Turkish' influence." (Exposition de la Turquerie auXVIIIe siècle [1911] p. 5–6) While this assessment is somewhat exaggerated, equally noted by Nebahat Avcıoğlu and Finbarr Barry Inundation, "the circulation of images was integral" to the burgeoning cultural exchange between "Orient" and "Occident" that began in earnest in the eighteenth century. ("Globalizing Cultures: Fine art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century,"Ars Orientalis 39 [2010], p. 31.)

Exposition de la Turquerie au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: 1911)

Gentile Bellini, A Turkish Janissary (c. 1480) © British Museum
Melchior Lorck, Zelome Sultane (1581) © Rijksmuseum

European artists had visited Istanbul and drawn its inhabitants at least since the days of Gentile Bellini (d. 1507), Nicolas de Nicolay (d. 1583), and Melchior Lorck (d. after 1583), but the artist maybe most responsible for the popularity of Turquerie in the eighteenth century was the Flemish-French painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour (d. 1737). Having come to Istanbul in 1699 in the suite of the French administrator Marquis Charles de Ferriol, Vanmour remained in Istanbul for almost 4 decades until his death in 1737, producing hundreds of images ranging from city views, parades, and ambassador'due south audiences to portraits of Ottoman statesmen and ordinary people. In 1707, he was commissioned past his French patron, Ferriol, to produce a hundred images of different inhabitants of the city depicted in their official or ethnic costumes. His images of Sultan Ahmed III, various members of the Topkapı Palace, and inhabitants of the urban center (including Armenians, Albanians, and Europeans) were engraved and published in Paris. Entitled Recueil de cent estampes représentant différentes nations du Levant (1712–13), the volume was presently translated into various European languages and became highly influential among artists seeking first-manus sources on oriental costumes and furnishing. Vanmour received the title of peintre ordinaire du roi en Levant in 1725, simply his artistic connections were not limited to France. In 1727, the Dutch ambassador Cornelis Calkoen commissioned Vanmour to paint the administrator in the Reception Chamber of the Topkapı Palace. Indeed, Vanmour was i of the offset European painters to have the award of entering the Topkapı Palace, painting many other ambassadors' audiences in the Reception Chamber.

Recueil de cent estampes representant differentes nations du Levant (1714) )
Recueil de cent estampes representant differentes nations du Levant (German translation) (Almanca çevirisi)

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, The Ambassadorial Procession (1725?) © Pera Museum

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, The Ambassadorial Delegation Passing through the Second Courtyard of the Topkapı Palace (1725?) © Pera Museum

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, Dinner at the Palace in Honour of an Ambassador (1725?) © Pera Museum.

Before railroads and steamships made travel to the Ottoman Empire affordable and accessible, the Orient appeared as a theme and influence in European culture mainly in the accounts of travellers. Vanmour's portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (d. 1762) in Ottoman garb, depicted with her son Edward and two other attendants, was painted in Istanbul between 1717 and 1718 when she accompanied her English language ambassador husband. Lady Montagu's regular letters dwelling house to her friends with details near her Istanbul life, and the Ottoman costumes she purchased in Istanbul and continued to wear once back in England helped popularize the style of Turquerie. The British upper classes gradually appropriated the oriental exotic equally a way to distinguish themselves from those of lower status. British historian and anecdotist Joseph Spence, for case, spoke with peachy admiration of John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who extended his grand tour in the late 1730s to the Ottoman Empire: "A man that has been all over Greece, at Constantinople, Troy, the pyramids of Egypt, and the deserts of Arabia, talks and looks with a greater air than we trivial people can do that have only crawled near France and Italy".

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu with her son, Edward Wortley Montagu, and attendants (c. 1717) © National Portrait Gallery.

In contrast, the French upper classes, mayhap under the influence of Antoine Gallant's wildly successful 1704 translation of the Thousand and 1 Nights, seem to take associated Ottoman culture with femininity, idleness, and pleasure. As a relatively novel production imported to Europe via Istanbul and Cairo, coffee became a key signifier of a sophisticated and wordly patterns of leisure and consumption, and features prominently in interior paintings of oriental women, such every bit Vanmour's Turkish Girl Drinking Java on a Sofa and Women Drinking Coffee, equally well as several bearding gimmicky images inspired by his work: The Day after the Wedding: the Feast of Trotters and Pleasure of Coffee. Information technology is interesting to notation that the exaggeratedly elaborate turban in the mid-eighteenth century Pleasure of Coffee seems to take been lifted from a more than doubtable source, Reizen van Cornelis de Bruyn (1698).

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, Coffee on a sofa, Recueil de cent estampes representant differentes nations du Levant

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, Women Drinking Coffee (1700-1750) © Pera Museum

Unknown artist, The Day After the Wedding: The Feast of Trotters (mid-18th century) © Pera Museum

Unknown artist, Enjoying Coffee (start one-half of the 18th century) © Pera Museum si
Reizen van Cornelis de Bruyn (Travels of Cornelis de Bruyn), 1698

In particular, in portraits of Westerners dressed in oriental garb, luxurious splendour and a sexual subtext oft get as much the field of study as the sitter. The French ambassador to Istanbul, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, commissioned local French painter Antoine de Favray to pigment his portrait (1766) and afterward that of his new married woman Anne Testa (1768) in bright and luxuriant Ottoman costumes. The representations of the 2 figures seated on luxurious furs and cushions were in hit contrast to a courtier's life at Versailles in the eighteenth century, which comprised long hours of standing; moreover, Anne is not depicted creaking uncomfortably in a corset, essential underwear for a contemporary courtly lady, merely sitting at ease in a relatively loose dress. A pop genre was notable ladies being attended en sultane; for instance Mademoiselle de Clermont (d. 1741), painted seated bare-legged on sumptuous carpets at her bath side by Jean-Marc Nattier, or Madame de Pompadour (d. 1764), the chief mistress of Louis 15, painted being served coffee in her risqué "Turkish boudoir" past Charles-André van Loo. In both portraits, the French women are waited upon past other key signifiers of spending power in this period; black women or child servants; or, inside the logic of the fantasy, slaves.

Antoine de Favray, Portrait of Charles Gravier Count of Vergennes and French Administrator, in Turkish Attire (1766) © Pera Museum
Antoine de Favray, Portrait of the Countess of Vergennes in Turkish Attire (1768) © Pera Museum

Jean-Marc Nattier, Mademoiselle de Clermont en sultane (1733) © The Wallace Collection

Charles-André van Loo, Madame de Pompadour en sultane (1747) © Musée des Arts Décoratifs

Not but aristocrats only besides the enterprising suburbia sought to rediscover themselves in the funhouse mirror of oriental fantasy. The Swiss painter Jean-Etienne Liotard (d. 1789), moved to Istanbul in 1738 and stayed at that place for five years, painting the various inhabitants of the city in their Ottoman attire. While there, he adopted what one of his customers, the English anthropologist Richard Pococke, called "Turkish habit," including an about waist-length beard. It should be noted that facial pilus, most particularly beards, had generally fallen out of way in this period in Europe, and the ruthless westerniser Peter the Bang-up had fifty-fifty levied a revenue enhancement in 1698 against those Russians who refused to shave them off. When Liotard relocated to Vienna, he produced an unusual cocky-portrait in oriental attire and sporting his magnificent whiskers and beard, featuring an outsize signature and the inscription "known as the Turkish painter" that loudly proclaimed his new hybrid identity. Likewise, between 1787 and 1795, the wealthy art collector and classical scholar Thomas Hope undertook an eight-year grand bout in Europe and the Orient and recorded his impressions in about 350 unsigned drawings (at present at the Benaki Museum, Athens). In 1798, he posed in the Ottoman clothes that he had purchased in Athens for the respected English language portraitist Sir William Beechey. The painting was exhibited at the Purple University in 1799, and soon copied by the prolific and successful enamel painter Henry Os. One interesting detail here is Promise's slender moustache with its pointed ends curled upward, a style later adopted past Lord Byron in his Albanian costume portrait.

Jean-Etienne Liotard, Cocky-Portrait (1744) © Galleria degli Uffizi
Jean-Etienne Liotard, A Woman in Turkish Clothes (1740-1750) © Pera Museum

Thomas Hope, A Türbe in Üsküdar (late 18th century) © Benaki Museum

Henry Bone, A Portrait of Thomas Promise in Turkish Costume (1805) © Pera Museum
Thomas Phillips, Lord Byron in Albanian Clothes (1813/1835) © National Portrait Gallery

After the eighteenth century, however, the "dynamic and multi-thespian phenomenon" of Turquerie became subsumed in nineteenth-century Orientalism, which would often presume the political and cultural inferiority of the Orient to rationalise and sustain Western authority over it. This royal imperative is conspicuously dominant in the Othering and oftentimes sexually-charged images of the Eastward past Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (d. 1867), Eugène Delacroix (d. 1863), and Jean-Léon Gérôme (d. 1904), although critics accept sought to recover elements of serious cultural encounter and self-exploration in the works of painters similar John Frederick Lewis (d. 1876) and the Ottoman orientalist painter Osman Hamdi Bey (d. 1910). Still, as Linda Nochlin put it, in all those works, the Oriental earth appears as "a world without change, a world of timeless, atemporal customs and rituals, untouched past the historical processes." (Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient", The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Fine art and Order [1989], pp. 35–36.)

Looking back, information technology has become clear that such currents every bit Orientalism and Turquerie were not, as previously thought, unidirectional relations between the active W and the passive East, that the W had interlocutors in the East, indeed that Orientalism was sometimes confronted by Occidentalism. At the same fourth dimension, a more objective and disquisitional perspective on Turquerie reveals such problematical aspects as the "Othering" that lay backside superficial admiration, the impulse to reduce an unabridged nation to a handful of stereotypes, the bulldoze to commodify and appropriate its culture, and the ability to determine the way it would be represented without its consent. Establishing a monopoly and authorisation over the Other'due south representation (in the words of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the application of "epistemic violence") is never innocent; those who now praise Le Turc généreux may well, 1 24-hour interval, turn around and expletive "the barbaric Turk." In short, information technology is necesary to take upward the Turcophilia of eighteenth-century France together with former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing'south assertion, a few centuries later on, that "Turkey is non a European country." (Le Monde, 9 November 2002)

* The authors would like to thank Yan Overfield Shaw for his suggestions.

Authors: Dr. Gizem Tongo and Irvin Cemil Schick

Symbols

Pera Museum's Cold Front from the Balkans exhibition curated by Ali Akay and Alenka Gregorič brings together gimmicky artists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Republic of macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

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Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico was born on July x, 1888, in Volos, Hellenic republic, to an Italian family. His mother, Gemma Cervetto, was from a family of Genoa origin, but about likely she was born in Izmir. His father, Evaristo, was built-in on June 21, 1841 in the Büyükdere district of Istanbul.