The selection of works from the Suna and İnan Kıraç Orientalist Painting Collection included in the “İstanbul: The City of Dreams” exhibition thus emerge as outstanding visual documents that feature, largely though the perspective of Western artists, a view of the Ottoman world stretching from the 17th to the early 20th century. Organized under three major headings, the exhibition expands from life in the household and private domains to urban space and into more general views of İstanbul. Consequently, as the city is reflected on the canvasses of European artists in its entirety through its topography, architecture, people, traditions, and ways of life, such a revival allows us partake in the “Eastern journey” of these travellers and rediscover in their company -and through their eyes -İstanbul and the Ottoman world of unrivalled wonders.
Daily life of the interior
A significant majority of the city’s scenes from daily life is comprised of domestic life and the women who shape the home interior. Women often constituted one of the fundamental themes of Orientalist painting. The infatuation with accessing the harem, namely the private living space of the Eastern woman, was almost tantamount to penetrating the mysteries of the East. The failure to see this intimate domain at their will naturally caused hundreds of Western men, including travellers, writers, painters, and poets, to fantasize about the Eastern woman and to conjure up glimpses of an imaginary life. Since Western artists could not freely access the Muslim household, they often selected their models from non-Muslim families for their paintings of the household interior where women were present