Study of a Seated Arab

Vojtěch Bartoněk's 'Study of a Seated Arab' (1889) belongs to the tradition of Orientalist life study — the depiction of models from North Africa or the Middle East who were regularly available in European art academies as exotic alternatives to the usual European figure models. The Arab or North African model offered European academicians the opportunity to practice figure study while engaging with the Orientalist subject that was so commercially and critically appealing in the late nineteenth century. Bartoněk's engagement with this subject placed him within the broader European Orientalist tradition.

Bartoněk renders the seated Arab figure with the academic precision of life study combined with the Orientalist interest in the exotic visual qualities of the subject — the specific costume, the facial type, and the pose creating the pictorial content that distinguished Orientalist figure study from conventional European models. His technique applies the academic life-drawing discipline to a subject whose cultural difference was itself part of the painting's formal interest.