New Haven, CT - In February 2008 the Yale Center for British Art will serve as the premiere and only U.S. venue for British Orientalist Painters. This exhibition focuses on the complex and dynamic response of British artists to the cultures and landscapes of the Near and Middle East that they experienced with increasing frequency over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Organized by Tate Britain in association with the Yale Center, British Orientalist Painters includes approximately 90 paintings, prints, and drawings that depict sites and subjects of interest to British artists, including bazaars, public baths, and domestic interiors.

Several exceptional and rarely seen paintings by John Frederick Lewis; Edward Lear; David Wilkie; Richard Dadd; William Holman Hunt; and Frederic, Lord Leighton, will be on view, as well as impressive works by some less familiar artists. The exhibition explores the major genres, themes, and preoccupations of Orientalist painting. In addition to sections on portraiture, genre painting, and the portrayal of landscape, British Orientalist Painters will include sections on the depiction of the harem and religious sites.

While other large-scale exhibitions and publications have explored the theme of Orientalism in the visual arts, British art has typically played a supporting role to that of other countries. In contrast, this exhibition looks at the unique British experience of the “Orient” during various moments of East-West contact, and considers how the particular traditions of British art were developed in these contexts. It also addresses the question of the interpretation of Orientalist painting today, in the wake of Edward Said’s profoundly influential book Orientalism (1978).

Organized by Tate Britain in association with the Yale Center for British Art, British Orientalist Painters is co-curated by Nicholas Tromans, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Kingston University, London, and Emily Weeks, independent scholar. The organizing curators are Christine Riding, Curator, Tate Britain; Julia Marciari- Alexander, Associate Director for Exhibitions and Publications, Yale Center for British Art; and Eleanor Hughes, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Yale Center for British Art.

Publication
A fully illustrated book, published by Tate Publishing, will accompany the exhibition and will be available for purchase in the Museum Shop.

Tour
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven: February 7–April 28, 2008

Tate Britain, London: June 4–August 31, 2008

Pera Museum, Istanbul: October 2008–January 2009

Sharjah Art Museum, United Arab Emirates: February–April 2009

Pearls to pyramids: British visual culture and the Levant, 1600–1830

To complement British Orientalist Painters, the Yale Center for British Art has organized the exhibition Pearls to Pyramids: British Visual Culture and the Levant, 1600–1830, drawn from the collections of the Yale Center, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and other libraries at Yale University. This exhibition explores intersections between British visual culture and the countries of the eastern Mediterranean beginning in the early seventeenth century, when political and economic shifts enabled Britain to reassert itself as a dominant participant in the Mediterranean trade that had long been monopolized by Venice. The exhibition introduces the geographical and historical context of the Mediterranean trade with paintings by Peter Lely, the William van de Veldes (father and son), and through early travel accounts that both expressed and inspired fascination with Eastern societies. the nineteenth century, beginning with visual responses to Nelson’s victory over Napoleon in Egypt.

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