A Study on Orientalism in the Paintings of Delft School in 17th Century Netherlands

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate the exchange between the East and the West during the 17th century through analyzing the oriental influences described in paintings in Delft school, a trade port of East India Company.The scope of this study focused on the 37 pieces of works by Johannes Vermeer and 31 pieces of the paintings by Pieter de Hooch, which are all the existing work, as analysis targets.The resources of this study were from previous papers about the history of costumes, paintings and culture, Internet sources and other qualitatively analyzed articles.The items that the study looked into were Delft porcelains and Delft tiles, Turkey carpets, costumes and accessories pearl earrings and headdresses.The study looked into oriental factors observed in each of these items, and analyzed them.In terms of oriental factors that are frequently observed in paintings, porcelains (100%), Deft tiles (100%), pearl earrings (100%) and (most) carpets (92.3%) turned out to have oriental nature, but this was not the case with head dresses (7.7%) and clothing (0.3%).These results happen to coincide with the previous investigation in that the oriental factor was reflected in the culture first, while the effects on costumes significantly lagged behind.This progress in cultural exchange can be seen through the noted use of Chinoiserie, a technique that is representative of the Chinese culture, in the 18th century.Through Japonism, the influence of Japanese culture into Europe was introduced, in detail, in 19th century.These results suggest that there are sufficient amount of sources that could be used to study the effect of orientalism to the Western culture.This study intends to look at how the oriental culture affected those of Europe by researching the Delft school of Netherlands during the 17th century.

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