The Bather of Valpinçon (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808, Louvre)

Orientalism is a polysemic term that is used both to designate oriental studies (the study of oriental civilizations, current and historical, especially those of the Near and Middle East, and to a lesser extent those of the Far East), and to designate the representation (imitation or mystification) of certain aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by Western writers, designers and artists, which ended up becoming stereotypical clichés.

Painters such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexander Roubtzoff were recreated in representations of all kinds of scenes set in settings in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East. Both in the landscapes and in the interiors the exotic and sensual aspects of contrasts between the clouds and the dazzling light of the desert and the gloomy interiors, the fantastic colors of the clothes and the seductive carnations were accentuated - in all shades, from black to pearly white, passing through brown; especially in the scenes of the baths and harems, which allowed the voluptuous representation of nudes or semi-dresses of the odalisques in positions of inviting laxity. When Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, director of the French Académie de peinture painted a very colorful vision of a Turkish bath, he made this eroticized east publicly acceptable by its diffuse generalization of female forms, which could all have been the same. model. Sensuality looked acceptable in the exotic East. This style had its peak at the Universal Expositions in Paris in 1855 and 1867.