A PORTRAIT OF SULTAN ABDULHAMID I (R.1774-89), STYLE OF KONSTANTIN KAPIDAGLI, TURKEY, FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

The portrait depicts Sultan Abdulhamid I (r.1774-89), the twenty-seventh sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The sultan is painted wearing a fur-lined red robe with diamond frogging. A large diamond-set dagger is tucked into his robe and he wears a medallion shaped, diamond aigrette in his turban. His dark beard is hardly distinguishable from the fur lining of the robe around his name. His face and dress can be compared to a full-length portrait which depicts him seated on a gold throne. Attributed to Rafael or Rafael School, and dated to 1737-89, the painting is in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul (17/22, Kangal 2000, no.127, p.434).

The present portrait has been executed in the style of Konstantin Kapidagli, an artist of Greek origin who was working at the Ottoman court between the 1780s and 1810. He painted several portraits of Sultan Selim III (r.1789-1807), the nephew of Abdulhamid I who became the twenty-eigth Ottoman Sultan. Kapidagli is renowned for his set of paintings comprising twenty-eight portraits of Ottoman Sultans which was commissioned by Selim III and is known as the Kapidagli Series. The series, produced between 1804 and 1806, is now in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum. The oval format of the present lot, the three-quarter profile of the sitter and his style of robe finds comparison with a medallion portrait of Selim III from the Kapidagli Series (ibid., no.138.27, p.490). On the order of Selim III, portraits from the Kapidagli series were sent to London in 1806 for prints to be made. John Young was commissioned to engrave and produce the prints.

Based on the Kapidagli models and the printed portraits produced by Young, several portrait series were produced in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the reigns of Selim III, Mahmud II and Abdulmecid (ibid., pp.443-4). For a portrait of an Ottoman diplomat, probably Mehmed Said Pasha, from the same series as the present work, see the following lot.

A comparable portrait of Selim III sold in these rooms, 23 October 2019, lot 301.