 Women, costumes, portraits Portraits focusing on women's costume form an important category of these pictures by western artists. Although the artists did not have the opportunity to observe Ottoman women at home, they could see women's clothing for themselves, and many of them purchased Ottoman garments to take back home with them and used these as studio accessories. Consequently we find many 18th and 19th century paintings of real European women or imaginary women dressed in Ottoman costume. Among diplomatic circles in Istanbul it was fashionable to be portrayed in Ottoman costume. Painters unable to depict Ottoman women in indoor attire from life, instead portrayed Greek, Armenian, Jewish and Levantine women in such scenes. In fact, however, Ottoman palace women and those of the upper classes were keen to have their portraits painted, and western women painters such as Henriette Brown and Mary Walker were in popular demand. However, when these portraits showing them dressed in European clothing of the latest fashion were completed, they were not hung in full view, but concealed in cupboards or by a curtain so that the male servants of the household should not see them. |  A Woman in Turkish Dress Detail Jean-Etienne Liotard |
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