The increased presence of artefacts from the Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia in Second Empire Paris ultimately raises broader issues about the commodification and translocation of material culture from a region caught up in a declining Ottoman Empire called to modernise in the face of expanding European imperialism.ġ Orientalia at the Musée rétrospectif in 1865 The group portrait allows insights and speculations on the rationales and processes behind the movement of the objects, from the point of view of European demand, but also of Middle Eastern availability. In other words, a collective biography of Middle Eastern artworks in Parisian hands during the 1860s can be attempted. Piece by piece, insights can be gained on the objects concerned, the players involved, and the economics at stake. Some artworks photographed at the 1865 show can be traced down to museums today, where further data on their origin, style and provenance are retrievable. Those depicted by photography, together with the ones only known through written descriptions, pop up in loan records, press clippings, exhibition catalogues or auction minutes. Visual records exist for a fraction of the artworks exhibited in 1865. Some information can be retrieved on each event and their contents by mining an array of heterogeneous data. Two auction sales connected to both exhibitions followed in 18. An Egyptian display at the Exposition universelle of 1867 subsequently brought to international attention a substantial amount of Islamic salvage. This circumstance provides a unique opportunity to explore the range and type of Islamic collectibles then held in French private hands. For the first time French collectors and amateurs were publicly showing their specimens in applied arts, either Western artefacts, or pieces from elsewhere, the Islamic world included. The earliest is the loan show organised by the Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie in 1865. All took place in Paris during the late Second Empire. Three interconnected public events, closely linked to the rise of these collectibles on the art market, helped to further the extent of European encounters with historic artworks from the Middle East and the interactions that sustained them. From the outset, the Western appraisal of Islamic antiques was embedded into transnational dynamics working in both directions.
More importantly, the presence of such collectibles in Europe did not depend on European agency alone Middle Eastern actors also took part in the European exposure of such objects. 3 From the very beginning, shows devoted to applied arts, routinely described as industrial, ornamental or decorative in the sources, also hosted Islamic artefacts among their exhibits alternative viewing was thus provided to those who had not travelled East. Every single Universal Exposition since 1851 presented objects from the region, 2 whether they were the product of current craftsmanship or “curiosities” from the past – the common term then used for non-Western artworks. 1 These did not represent however the first or sole opportunities for direct exposure to artworks from the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa that were offered to European audiences during the age of empire, industry and spectacle. Martins Sammlungen aus dem Orient within the General Art and Industry exhibition, 1897), Algiers ( Exposition d’art musulman, 1905) and Munich ( Meisterwerke Muhammedanischer Kunst, 1910). Early displays of Islamic arts and crafts in nineteenth-century Europe are commonly associated with a set of shows that were held between 18 in London ( Exhibition of Arab and Persian Art, 1885), Paris ( Les Arts musulmans, 18), Stockholm ( F.