Turkish Women’s Figures and Clothing Properties Seen in Ottoman Term Orientalist Paintings

Among movements appearing in the painting art, the one most affecting the Turkish painting has become orientalism. Orientalism is defined as the West and East’s effort to understand each other better. The 18th century, when the Ottoman Empire is socially, economically and politically in the decline stage, is also the beginning of the orientalist movement. Great interest has been shown to Turkish and foreign painters in the terms of Sultan Selim III, Abdülmecid and Abdülaziz. Cultural interaction between painters has revealed an interest on using the Ottoman and East motifs not only in the side of the Ottoman and also in Western art. Topics of Orientalist painters are generally figure compositions and landscapes. That figure compositions take place in orientalism has caused the woman figure in the painting art to come to the forefront. In this research, it was focused on the women’s figures and clothes the orientalist painters used in their paintings while narrating their own, their cities and societies. Epochal figurative paintings of European and Turkish painters, who composed works on the Ottoman territories, were examined in terms of woman images, spaces, clothing, daily-use articles and other cultural items. The women’s clothes’ model properties, ornamentations, accessories, fabrics and material types were emphasized. Since there wasn’t any style consensus in orientalist paintings, comments of painters on woman images and clothing were compared. In the research the descriptive method was used, and the data were got with the document scanning technique.