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Originally Posted by ariel
Vereshchagin's pictures reflected fascination of the 19th century Western artists with the "mysterious Orient": he was a Russian Gerome. Both painted Muslim soldiers carrying exotic weapons and dressed in exotic garb. In the absense of photography their paintings are our best source of iconographic information, although their complete veracity cannot be vouched for. Orientalism was heavily Romantic. Studio portraits and use of props were customary. One can only wonder how Central Asian nomads, Egyptian soldiers or Ottoman bashibouzuks managed all wear impeccably clean clothes of heavily saturated colors not faded by the unrelenting sunlight and not given to dirt, dust, wear and tear.
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Ariel, you can not simply group all painters from that time period together as "orientalist" as a way to discredit the accuracy of their paintings, although I do see this happening a lot. Many painters visited the areas they painted, some for extended periods of time and they took great pride in factually painting what they saw, while others may have not been so detailed, you have to examine the painting individually before making judgements.
As for the often seen (but not always) paintings of clean, colorful clothing and the people wearing them, I have wondered about that myself, especially when you see someone wearing all white, but photographs from the same time periods can show that this was not just imagination.
Emir Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, the Emir of Bukhara, seated holding a sword in Bukhara, (present-day Uzbekistan), ca. 1910, early original color photograph.