The variety of bladed weapons shown by an Orientalist artists most likely stems from their making quick drawings on the spot, but painting the actual oils somewhere in their European ateliers, with multiple swords and daggers available for positioning them conveniently.
Delacroix, Gérôme and Ingres had their ateliers in Paris, Vereshchagin in Munich.
Delacroix painted his famous Massacre in Chios well before he ever visited Greece, Ingres had several Napoleonic oils depicting the latter’s Middle East campaign even though he himself never joined it, Vereshchagin participated in the infamous Kaufman’s conquest of Central Asian khanates, but the paintings were made in Germany. That was where they all kept their stashes of exotic stuff. Indian, Turkish or Persian weapons,- they knew close to nothing about them, and the public knew even less. My favourite example is Rembrandt’s Blinding of Samson, where Philistine soldiers are armed with a Balinese Kris and Ceylonese Pathistanaya:-)
This is why we should view Orientalist images of Oriental weapons as even less documentary true than the later staged photographic images of Indian and especially Afghani campaigns made by British photographers.
Perhaps the only military photographs closest to the reality were the American images of the Civil War. Sure, there were group portraits, but there also were unflattering images of the living conditions, battle scenes, marches and body-strewn battlefields. These were made for newspapers, not for some “ Academy exhibitions”.
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