The Lure of the East

Pera Museum hosted The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting exhibition organized in collaboration with Tate Britain, one of the most distinguished art institutions in the world, and the British Council. The exhibition brought together some of the most important works of British Orientalist painting around the world.

Opened at the Yale Center for British Art, the U.S.A. in February 2008 and Tate Britain Linbury Galleries in June 2008, the widely acclaimed The Lure of the East exhibition was presented on the third floor of Pera Museum. Following the US and the UK, the exhibition was opened for the third time in Pera Museum in Istanbul. The 105 masterpieces included in the exhibition were accompanied by highlights such as Osman Hamdi Bey’s Two Musicians Girls and Henry Bone’s Portrait of Thomas Hope in Turkish Dress from the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Orientalist Painting Collection, as well as David Wilkie’s Portrait of Sultan Abdülmecid from the Topkapı Palace Collection. The exhibition was opened in February 2009 at its fourth destination, the Sharjah Art Museum, in the United Arab Emirates.

Artists: William Allan, David Bomberg, Henry Bone, George Price Boyce, Richard Carline, Richard Dadd, Frank Dillon, Joseph Farquharson, Jean-Leon Gerome, Carl Haag, Osman Hamdi Bey, Gavin Hamilton, William Holman Hunt, Edith Holman Hunt, Augustus John, John Lavery, Edward Lear, Frederic Leighton, Jean-Etienne Liotard, Arthur Melville, William James Müller, Thomas Phillips, Henry William Pickersgill, Joshua Reynolds, Jonathan Richardson, David Roberts, James Sant, John Singer Sargent, Thomas Seddon Stanley, Spencer William, Simpson David Wilkie