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Iconothèque

Welcome to Iconothèque. Iconothèque currently consists of two features:

Orientalist Paintings

Images of more than 200 mostly 19th century paintings with orientalism as a theme appear here by such painters as Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Léon Gérôme. Along with each image we have included a considerable amount of information, such as artist, title, date, and place depicted.

"Art of Colonialism, Colonialism of Art"

This article by David Prochaska examines the engravings of the Description de l'Égypte as an archetypal case of visual orientalism. The Description, published 1809-1828 in the aftermath of Napoleon's 1798 invasion of Egypt, consists of more than 3000 engraved illustrations in 10 folio volumes. More than 90 images from the Description and other contemporary sources are used to illustrate the arguments of the paper.

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