Prière Dans La Mosquée 

Jean-Léon Gérôme painted "Prière Dans La Mosquée" in France at a time when Europe was expanding its colonial reach into North Africa and the Middle East. In the painting, Muslims are shown in prayer inside a mosque. But these images also served a public role, reflecting and shaping European ideas about the "Orient." The Western fascination with the East created what some scholars have called "Orientalism," a way of seeing that exoticizes and romanticizes non-Western cultures. These paintings weren't just neutral depictions; they were loaded with cultural assumptions. The rise of museums and art institutions played a crucial role, too. Paintings like this were displayed in salons and exhibitions, educating the public and reinforcing certain views of other cultures. To understand the full story, we can research 19th-century travelogues, colonial documents, and critical analyses of Orientalist art. The meaning of art is always tied to its social and institutional context.