Orient and Occident

Throughout the nineteenth century, Austrian painters traveled to far-off lands, taking their inspiration from bustling street markets, serene temples, and landscapes saturated in light—or drenched by tropical downpour.

Drawing on works currently on display at the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, Sabine Grabner and Agnes Husslein-Arco offer an extraordinary selection of Austrian depictions of the Orient, including portraits, landscapes, and richly hued market scenes. Among the most prolific of the painters collected here was Leopold Carl Müller, who produced over the course of ten winters in Egypt numerous paintings, many of which are reproduced in the book. Orient and Occident also follows in the footsteps of artists like August von Pettenkofen, Otto von Thoren, and Johann Gualbert Raffalt in Hungary; Rudolf Swoboda and Hermann von Königsbrunn in India and Sri Lanka; and many others, including Alois Schönn, Alphons Mielich, and Bernhard Fiedler.

Together, the artworks in Orient and Occident offer an awe-inspiring glimpse of these lands through the eyes of a group of prolific Austrian painters, shedding light as well on how attempts to capture unusual motifs and unfamiliar patterns of light in these exotic surroundings impelled these artists to introduce new approaches within Austrian art.