Head of a Cavass - Study for Slave Market, Constantinople

Artist Sir William Allan (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1782 - 1850)

Date1830

Mediumred, black and white chalk on paper

ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings

DimensionsOverall: Height: 14.2 cm, Width: 12.9 cm
Frame: Height: 55.7 cm, Width: 40.5 cm

AcquisitionPurchased in 1960.

CopyrightOut of copyright - CC0

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG003388

Keywords

About MeThis chalk drawing is a preparatory study for the oil painting "Slave Market, Constantinople" (1838). "Come and see my Slave Market," Allan told the writer Thomas Frognall Dibdin, "everybody and everything having been taken as seen on the spot." Allan was anything but an armchair Orientalist. He lived in Constantinople for two years and rhapsodised long after about the "beauty and magnificence [of] its mosques, domes, and minarets, richly ornamented, towering towards heaven." The mosque of this painting is Nuruosmaniye and the peoples represented include Greeks, Turks, Nubians, Arabs, Ethiopians, Georgians and more. Although unquestionably a product of its age, Allan refused to succumb to the sensuality and violence expected of nineteenth-century Orientalism. For a slave market, the scene is surprisingly buttoned up and Victorian: the odalisques are clothed and the tyrants seem apologetic in their posture and attitude. But most overt is Allan's palpable delight in the full spectrum of humanity. Personally and in his work, he refused to be drawn into the judgment that accompanies human difference.

Three characters from this crowded scene are the subjects of studies in the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections: a Circassian chief on horseback, who points to the booth where rarest objects of Circassia are kept; a Cavass, one of the sultan's guards, who leans on his staff with his pistols and yatagan (Turkish sword) hanging from his waist; and his able assistant, a fellow Turk, who prises a baby from its mother's grip.
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A cavass is an armed officer in the Turkish police