Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Vienna: A Phantasm?

Abstract

The first collections of Egyptian art in Vienna were already established in the first half of the nineteenth century, and collecting soon became fashionable. The Orient became a landscape of longing, tourism began, and painters travelled to Egypt and the Near East. Oriental style was used in architecture and design. When the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History) was built in Vienna, the galleries of the Egyptian Collection were decorated in ancient Egyptian style. The allegory of Ancient Egypt was painted by Gustav Klimt, combining realism with symbolism. The orientalist painters found their subject not only in landscape and architecture or folkloric scenes, but in harem scenes and slave markets that aroused fantasies and were best-selling pictures in Europe. The oriental woman stood for sexuality, in contrast to the social and sexual suppression of European women that became a wide field for the researches of physician Sigmund Freud. Almost half of Freud's collection of antique art was composed of Egyptian objects. Among his favourite gods were Thoth, and the deified architect Imhotep, connected with the interpretation of dreams as a means of healing.

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