The Female Gaze in 19th Century Orientalist Painting: Representation of the Harem and Alternative Narratives

Abstract

In the 19th century, European women artists, in an effort to reinterpret established images of the Orient through their own direct observations and experiences, visited Ottoman upper-class residences and court harems, translating their impressions into their paintings. In the literature on Orientalist art history, which has generally been shaped around the productions of male artists, the presence of women artists and their unique contributions to this field are of notable significance. The recent visibility gained by the works of these women artists through contemporary research enables a re-evaluation of Orientalist modes of representation from a broader perspective. At the center of this research lies the question of whether the visuality offered by these artists reinforced well-established Orientalist clichés, or whether it pointed toward an alternative reality by deconstructing this discourse. To this end, the study identifies and critically analyzes the works of Henriette Browne, Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, Margaret Murray Cookesley, and Mary Adelaide Walker, who had the privilege of entering the harem during their visits to the Ottoman geography. The analysis reveals that while Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann occasionally reproduced the general visual codes and exotic expectations of Orientalism, Henriette Browne, by contrast, purged the harem of erotized elements, depicting it as a modest living space where daily life unfolded. Furthermore, Mary Adelaide Walker and Henriette Browne tended to portray women as active, working, and music-performing subjects —contrary to the passive and expectant imagery of Orientalism— whereas Margaret Murray Cookesley treated her figures as individuals embodying the virtues of friendship, solidarity, and sisterhood. Consequently, this study demonstrates that alternative female narratives do not constitute a homogeneous unity within themselves; rather, they offer a polyphonic dimension of debate that makes visible the heterogeneous, contradictory, and gender-oriented structure of Orientalist discourse.