L’Orient des Peintres, du rêve à la lumière [Painters’ Orient from dream to light], the Musée Marmottan Monet exhibition running from March 7 to July 21, 2019 highlights French painters’ works who travelled to the Orient.

This exhibition completes well Musée Marmottan Monet’s tour dedicated to Napoleon and his family. The visit of the exhibition takes us to the Mediterranean Orient specific to French colonial Empire. We find two types of paintings: portraits and landscapes.

At the beginning of the “L’Orient des Peintres” exhibition, we find Ingres and Delacroix surrounded by their students who went to the East, Ingres immortalizing the Grande Odalisque (Editor’s Note. Woman found in harem), Delacroix and Chassériau bringing a more real vision but not less classic of the countries.

“L’Atelier du voyage” brings the recognition of architecture and oriental decorative arts and leads to the research of harmony between the human body and the odalisque, this woman from a harm. And most of all, it’s about the renewal of the color spectrum that these travels will bring: facing the bright light of the Orient and the unknown naturals shows, painters invent new ways of painting.

From Gérôme to Landelle and Vallotton, without forgetting Migonney, Bernard, Matisse and even Paul Klee, the “L’Orient des Peintres” exhibition shows us how a visit of the fantasied Orient has turned into an initiatory journey for European painters who come back transformed and offer exclusive works.