Portrait of an Ottoman man, possibly Sultan Mehmet IV
Oil on canvas, framed
Inscribed indisctinctly lower right ‘G*o* ****’, later inscription below: Gros 1811
62 cm. wide x 77 cm. high / 24 ½ ins x 33 ¼, incl. frame 82 x 98 cm. / 32 ¼ x 38 ½ ins
This striking bust-length oil portrait of a male sitter wearing a large grey turban embodies the fascination amongst European artists for depicting exotic Islamic figures or subjects in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, at a time when Europe was continually at war or under threat of invasion from the Ottoman Empire. It is in all likelihood a portrait of an important Ottoman ruler, possibly Sultan Mehmet IV (1642-93), whose armies were defeated at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 by the Allied German-Polish forces.
The sitter, shown facing to sinister, wears what appears to be a brown fur mantle and dark red undergarment and sports a long down-turned moustache. We have identified two portraits of what appear to be the same sitter, both of which are clearly related to the present subject. The first, sold at Christie’s (South Kensington, 4 June 2014, lot 170) – which could well be the prototype for the present portrait – shows what is clearly the same sitter in the same pose, wearing a near identical grey-blue turban. His dress is different to the present portrait, however, consisting of a leopard-skin sash and bright red mantle, which is more meticulously finished than in the present portrait. A third portrait of the same sitter, offered in London in 2005 (Sotheby’s, Exotica sale, 25th May 2005, lot 199), is rather more sketchy and less finished than the two other pictures. It shows the sitter turned more sharply to sinister and wearing a banded rather than plain turban. This suggests that the Sotheby’s portrait was either the original study for the prototype of this set of portraits, or a later unfinished replica of the original.
The Christie’s portrait was given to the circle of Jan Kupecký (1667-1740), a Bohemian painter who worked mainly in Vienna and Nuremberg and specialised in portraiture. The Sotheby’s portrait, meanwhile, was catalogued as ‘English School, circa 1800’ and the sitter was assumed to be a Persian man, possibly an ambassador. This cataloguing is incompatible with the Christie’s portrait and its similarities to central European portraits of the eighteenth century (for related portraits by Kupecky and his circle, see Dvořák, 1955 and 1956, op. cit.). It also appears unlikely that the present portrait depicts a Persian man, given the dress in the Christie’s portrait (which looks more European) and the turban, which seems rather generic and may be based on earlier Ottoman turbans.
Indeed, the sitter in the present known series recalls images of historic Ottoman rulers in Western art from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the Sultan Mehmet IV or the great sixteenth-century Sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent (1496-1566). For related images of these two figures in European art of this period, see, for example, a late seventeenth-century engraving of Mehmet IV in the British Museum (mus. no. Gg,4E.211), who is depicted with a similarly large round turban and long down-turned moustache with flat ends; and a 17th-18th century historicising portrait of Suleyman the Magnificent (Sotheby’s, London, 27 Oct 2021, lot 166), who is shown wearing a similar turban and animal-skin pelt.
It is likely that the inscription ‘Gros 1811’ is modern and was added in the last hundred years, when it may have entered a French collection. There is also an indistinct and apparently older inscription above, which may also read ‘Gros’, with an illegible date (possibly, 1711, or 1811?). This may be a later addition too.
It is most probable, therefore, that the present portrait and its related examples originate from the workshop of a prominent central European artist of the eighteenth century, who was either a pupil of or worked in the circle of Kupecký.
We are grateful to Dr. Zoltan Kovacs (Ph.D.), at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, for his opinion on the present painting and confirmation of its relation to Kupecký and his circle.
RELATED LITERATURE:
František Dvořák, Kupecky. Bratislava, 1955, pl. IV; František Dvořák, Kupecky: The great baroque portrait painter. Prague, 1956, pl. 5, 90; For related portraits of the same sitter, possibly by the same artist/studio, see: Christie’s, South Kensington, The Lex Aitken & Alfredo Bouret Gonzalez Collection, Sydney and Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, 39 Brook Street, Mayfair, 4th June 2014, lot 170: Sotheby's, Exotica: East Meets West, 1500-1900, London, 25th May 2005, lot 199
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