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A heavily-armed man

Anonymous Greek artist

1809

watercolor

From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum

Romanticism Early 19th Century

Dominant colour

A heavily-armed man is a 1809 watercolor by Anonymous Greek artist, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.

Who painted this?: Anonymous Greek artist
When & what style?: 1809 · Romanticism
Where can I see it?: Victoria and Albert Museum

About this work

This is a watercolour by an unknown Greek artist from around 1809. It’s part of a set made for a British diplomat who traveled in Turkey. The pictures mix Ottoman and European styles. The diplomat, Stratford Canning, paid a local artist to document what he saw. He even went beyond official visits to sketch buildings and customs himself. Look up the Victoria and Albert Museum next.

The story of this work

Overview

The artwork depicts an armed man dressed in a short, multicolored jacket and blue trousers, wearing a red and brown headdress, and equipped with a musket, a yatagan, and two pistols. Part of a series commissioned by Stratford Canning during his diplomatic mission to Istanbul, the drawing was likely created by an anonymous Greek artist possibly associated with Konstantin Kapidagli’s circle. The piece combines Ottoman artistic techniques with European perspective and was later acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1895 from Canning’s daughter. Originally bound in a volume, the series…

Read the full account in the museum source.