This database of orientalist paintings consists of nearly 300 individual images each followed by data systematically arranged on artist, nationality, title, date, place depicted, artistic medium, size, and current location of the work.

    You can use the following orientalist image database in a variety of ways. You can use it to search for specific artists and specific paintings. You can use it to compare different treatments of the same theme, for example, the representation of women in orientalist paintings. You can also use it to test hypotheses and arguments made about orientalist painters and paintings. For example, Linda Nochlin in "The Imaginary Orient" (1983, 1989) advances a number of claims about orientalist paintings generally. Yet due to certain constraints -- the length of a journal article with a limited number of illustrations -- her small number of examples are not sufficient to conclusively demonstrate her larger points. With many more images available here the database can be utilized by you to test Nochlin's hypotheses.

    Use the buttons at the bottom of each page to "forward" to next page, or return to "home." To go back to previous page, click on Netscape "Go" icon and "back."

    Thanks to Vernon Burton, Roxana Hadad, David Herr, Bob Jones, Todd Larson and especially Robert McLain for their help, and to the Advanced Information Technologies Group, Educational Technologies Board, Faculty Research Board, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications all at the University of Illinois for support. This material is copyright 1997 by David Prochaska. All rights reserved. For reproduction permission contact David Prochaska. We welcome feedback and comments to the author at dprochas@uiuc.edu.