Turquerie
Subtitle: an eighteenth-century European fantasy
By: Haydn Williams
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9780500252062
Subjects: European Art; Civilization; Themes, motives; Turkish influences; Turquerie (Art)
Description: This is the first book ... to identify the key elements of what in our own time has become a popular and collectable area of the fine art and decorative arts: turquerie. With the arrival of Ottoman embassies and their elaborate entourages at the courts of Europe in the early eighteenth century, a fascination with all things Turkish took hold among royalty and aristocracy that lasted until the French Revolution. Turbaned figures appeared in paintings, as ceramic figures, and on the stage; tented boudoirs became the rage; and crossed crescents, palm trees, and camels featured on wall panels, furniture, and enamel boxes. Here Haydn Williams, an expert on the decorative arts, shows how it was a theme that sparked varied responses in different places. Its most intense and long-lasting expression was in France, but its reach was broad-from a pavilion built by Catherine II in Russia to the Turkish tents erected along the Elbe to celebrate a royal marriage in Dresden in 1719; from an ivory statuette of a janissary created for King Augustus II of Poland to the costumes worn for a carnival celebration in Rome in 1748.--Provided by publisher
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-229) and index.
Table of contents: title: Europe and Constantinople after 1453; title: Connections in the 18th century; title: Playing the Turk in Europe; title: Reflections of the Ottoman world in European painting; title: Tents and other structures; title: Evoking the Ottoman world in European interiors; title: Conjuring up the Ottoman world in European applied arts; title: Continuity and change in the 19th century.