ORIENTALIST ART

Artist Biography

Jan Portielje of the Belgian-Dutch school, is well known for his genre paintings which featured elegant women in gardens and luxurious interiors. Some were dressed in Orientalist style, wearing exotic shawls, jewels, and textiles, likely influenced by his travels in Morocco. From 1842 to 1849, Portielje studied at the Koninklijke Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten with Valentijn Bing and Jan Braet von Überfeldt. He stayed in Paris from 1851 to 1853 and worked as a portraitist, with a large clientele in both Brussels and Antwerp, where he eventually settled. His paintings were also popular in the United States where he worked with several well-known art dealers such as Albert D’Huyvetter and his son (also named Albert), natives of Antwerp who were based in New York City, and the Prinz Brothers of Chicago. 

Portielje had a major exhibition at the ‘Exposition Internationale d’Anvers’ (1894) and was a regular participant in the ‘Exhibition of Living Masters’ from 1848 to 1888. Outside of Belgium and the Netherlands, his works can be viewed at the Alfred East Art Gallery in Kettering and the Bendigo Art Gallery in New South Wales.

Literature 

Ineke Bruynooghe, Het oeuvre van/The works of Portielje Jan - Gerard - Edward, Roeselare, 2001, no. 25, p. 49.  nr. 25. On pp. 46-50. 

Exhibition  

Campo & Campo, Antwerp, Belgium, 22 February - 16 March 2002.  

Artist Biography

Leopold Carl Müller (1834 -1892) was the most important Viennese Orientalist painter of the 19th Century movement. As a professor at Vienna Academy of Fine Arts he was highly influential teaching Orientalist talents such as Charles Wilda, Rudolf Swoboda, Franz Kosler, and briefly Alfonse Leopold Meilich. Müller is famous for his realist painterly style which focuses on depictions of Egyptian people in portraits and street scenes.

Müller was attracted to Orientalist painting at the Universal Exhibition of 1867 in Paris after viewing the works of Eugène Fromentin. After his first trip to Egypt in 1873-74, Müller debuted as an Orientalist artist with Marktplatz von dem Tore von Kairo (Market Square at the Gates of Cairo, Österreichische Galerie, Vienna).  To find subjects for his paintings, he visited Egypt nine times between 1873 and 1886, earning him the nickname “Müller the Egyptian” from his students. One of his most successful trips was in 1881 when he spent two months in Aswan. However, some of these paintings were completed in his studio in Vienna. In 1881 he wrote to his sisters, “Currently, I only wish to paint a picture which reproduces, even to some degree, the magic of this landscape. I wish you could see the picturesque brown and black Arabs, Nubians, Biscahris, and Barabas gathering in the streets in colourful crowds.” Many of his Oriental paintings went to England and Austria via his association with art dealer Henry Wallis and patronage from the Prince of Wales from 1875. 

Müller started his career as a student at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts under Carl von Blaas and C. Ruben. But after the death of his father, a famous lithographer who he also trained under, he supported his family by executing illustrations for the Viennese satirical journal Figaro. Müller travelled extensively through Europe, with repeated trips to Venice, Hungary and London. In 1877 he was appointed professor of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and contributed to Aegypten in Bild und Wort by Georg Ebers, published in 1879-80. In 1890 Müller became the Rector. 

 Provenance

Estate auction Leopold Carl Müller, H. O. Miethke, Vienna, 2 March 1893, lot 139.
Private Collection, Vienna.

Literature
Agnes Husslein-Arco, Sabine Grabner (ed.), Orient und Okzident. Österreichische Maler des 19. Jahrhunderts auf Reisen, Belvedere, Vienna 2012, p. 38, ill. 8 (Carl Rudolf Huber, photograph of the oil sketch, Photoinstitut Bonartes). 

Carl Werner's 'Coffee Shop' was the first painting acquired by the Amber Swai Gallery from Mathaf Gallery London in 2018. This charming watercolour depicts men in traditional garb relaxing at a coffee house and smoking hookah. The central figure is a working youth holding a coffee cup on a tray walking towards the viewer. This illustration is typical of Werner's attention to fine detail in the architecture and intricately painted tiles. Contrary to many Orientalist studio painters who never visited the Middle East, Werner visited Palestine and Egypt between 1862 and 1864 where he likely composed sketches related to this watercolour. 

Werner maintains his popularity in the Orientalist genre. His ‘Holy Rock of Jerusalem’ watercolour sold at Christies London for £209,000 in 2017. This impressive figure was demanded by the historical and religious significance of the site for both Muslims and Jews located at the centre of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. According to Islamic belief, it is the place from which the Prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam, is traditionally believed to have ascended into heaven on his horse Buraq. The Rock is also revered in Jewish tradition as the site where Abraham, the progenitor and first patriarch of the Hebrew people, prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Artist Biography

Henri Émilien Rousseau (17 December 1875, Cairo – 28 March 1933, Aix-en-Provence) was a French painter, graphic artist and illustrator, known for his Orientalist equestrian paintings. Henri Rousseau was born in Cairo in 1875. His father Léon Rousseau, was an engineer who participated in the construction of the Suez Canal and later became the General Director of Public Works for the Khedive, Ismail Pasha. His family left Cairo after the Anglo-Egyptian War, returned to France and, in 1885, settled in Versailles. 

Henri Rousseau remained a frequent visitor to the Middle-East where he composed sketches and visual materials to support his paintings on canvas. Whilst enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Rousseau was a student of the most famous Orientalist artist of the period, Jean-Leon Gerome. After receiving an award at the Salon of 1900, the Académie des Beaux-Arts provided Rousseau with a travel grant. He used the grant to visit Belgium, Holland, Spain, Tunis and Algeria. He presented his work from these travels at the Armory Show in 1913. The artist returned to North Africa numerous times between 1920 and 1932; visiting Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco in particular five times. 

In 1919 Rousseau moved from Paris to Aix-en-Provence, where he joined the Félibrige (an Occitan cultural organization) and became Vice-President of the local art academy in 1932. Although his work was given little recognition after his death, in 1994 an "Henri Rousseau Association" was created. The association has held exhibitions in Toulouse (1997) and Aix (2007). The Musée Granet has a large collection of his works. 

Museum Collections

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry
Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Musée d’Arts de Nantes, Nantes
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD 

A pair of 19th Century paintings both signed 'J.Bt. Huysmans' (lower right)

Artist Biography

Jan Baptist Huysmans was a student at the Academy of Antwerp from 1843 to 1849, where he exhibited for the first time in 1850. After 1856, he made several trips to Greece, Turkey, Syria, Palestine (where he executed large-scale religious decorations for churches in Jerusalem), Egypt and Algeria.  He published his travel accounts, including Travels in Italy and the Orient (1857), Notes and Impressions (1857) and Illustrated Travel in Spain and Algeria (1862).  Huysmans often depicted harem women and scenes of entertainment: jugglers, dancers, fortune-tellers.  He also painted portraits and ceremonies such as Chief of Dervishes Blessing the Children (1885). His paintings, dominated by reds, greens and ochres, are distinguished by the intricate detailing of costumes, architectural elements and exotic objects. Huysmans returned to Paris in his last years, where he exhibited at the Salon of the Society of French Artists in the early 1880s.  He also exhibited two canvases at the Manchester City Art Gallery and fourteen at the Institute of Fine Arts in Glasgow between 1882 and 1891.  

Bibliography: L. Thornton, The Orientalists, Traveling Painters 1828-1908, A.C.R.  Edition, Courbevoie (Paris), 1983. 

Artist Biography

Fritz Freund was born in 1859 (Darmstadt) and died in 1936 in Miesbach, Germany. Freund was a German genre painter who was born in Darmstadt on 13 April 1859. He was a pupil of the prestigious Munich Academy. Freund specialised in 17th and 18th Century costume pieces set in period surroundings. His free and evenly applied palette shows a strong influence of the Northern European Schools.