Walter Gould

Private Collection

Gerald M. Ackerman, American Orientalists, Paris, 1994, p. 101, illustrated and as cover

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has been restored fairly recently. The canvas has been lined, cleaned and retouched. There has been no abrasion to the paint layer however there are some structural damages which have been repaired. One is situated beneath the bearded figure in the lower center where a large web-like tear has been repaired to the right and beneath the water pipe. The other structural damage is in the window above the veiled women where another small tear has been repaired. Elsewhere isolated spots of retouching are visible in the upper right, in the face of the standing figure on the far left and to some cracking in the pink robe of the woman standing on the left side. However, all these damages are isolated and not unexpected. The picture looks well as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Though the present work was chosen for the cover of Gerald Ackerman's majestic American Orientalists (Paris, 1994), its artist, Walter Gould, remains one of Orientalism's last undiscovered masters.  Gould's paintings of life in Turkey, albeit modest in number, are instantly recognizable. They are marked by an almost impossible clarity, a delicacy and precision of line, an intensity of color, and a haunting stillness, that is virtually unparalleled in the genre. 

Gould studied in Philadelphia with the popular panorama-painter John Rowsin Smith and the esteemed portrait painter Thomas Sully, from whom he learned perspective and oil technique, respectively.¹  Gould's first known pictures were portraits, exhibited in 1843 and 1844 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1847, he submitted a history painting to the same venue.  In the late 1840s, Gould traveled to Europe.  He met the American neo-classical sculptor Hiram Powers in Florence, where he settled in 1849. 

Perhaps at the insistence of Powers, Gould traveled to Turkey in 1851 in order to take advantage of a potential portrait commission.²  Lajos Kossuth, the celebrated leader of the 1849 revolution in Hungary against Russian troops, had fled to Turkey as a refugee, and was sent by the Sultan to Kütahya, in inland Anatolia. Armed with a letter of introduction and support from Sir Stratford Canning, British ambassador to Constantinople (modern Istanbul), Gould was allowed several sittings with the charismatic Kossuth.  His letters to Powers from this period indicate that the two men became close friends.³   

Gould returned to Constantinople in mid-August. There, he was urged by Powers to arrange his immediate return to America, so that his portrait (and the lithographs and engraved reproductions he planned to make after it) would anticipate Kossuth's own arrival.  (Kossuth, a hero in democratic countries, was rumored to be planning a trip to America upon his liberation.) Powers also encouraged Gould to send copies of their correspondence concerning Kossuth to American newspapers, as advance publicity.

Unfortunately, Gould was delayed in Constantinople, inundated with portrait commissions.  'It is very pleasant to have a commission from these great people,' Gould wrote to Powers, 'but very annoying to be obliged to await their pleasure or convenience for sitting.'  To pass the time, Gould likely made sketches of local mosques, marketplaces, and other aspects of daily Turkish life, which would provide the inspiration for many of his later works.  Among these subjects, the figure of the public scribe would undoubtedly have captured his attention.

Scribes provided an essential service in Turkey - still, at mid-century, a largely illiterate country - and offered a subject rich in narrative potential.  Among nineteenth-century British artists, Thomas Allom, David Roberts, John Frederick Lewis, and David Wilkie all selected this theme at one time or another (fig. 1), as did the German Ludwig Deutsch and the Danish painter Martinus Christian Wesseltopf Rørbye (fig. 2).  For many of these artists, the public scribe offered an opportunity to portray the elusive figure of the Turkish woman. After becoming increasingly frustrated with the difficulty of finding women to sit for his Turkish genre scenes, for example, Wilkie at last 'saw at the outer court of a mosque a scribe of the most venerable appearance. He was reading a letter on paper he had been writing for two Turkish young women - one very handsome: the way they were placed made an excellent composition for a picture' (written 6 October 1840, and quoted in Allan Cunningham, The Life of Sir David Wilkie . . . , London, 1843, vol. III, p 220).  Though Wilkie made a sketch of the scene as he saw it, the more finished version of the work (illustrated here) traded a Greek figure for one of the Turkish girls - perhaps in order to be able to show her unveiled - and added an element of intrigue to the composition.  By about 1850, it was well understood that the subject was the diction of a love-letter (see The Wilkie Gallery).

In Rörbye's painting, the scene is very similar, with a spectacled scribe seated at the entrance of a mosque, and two women (both now veiled) looking eagerly on.  So too, the artist has given his picture a romantic gloss, this time through the title of the work: It is not just any document that the scribe pens, but a marriage contract. 

Gould's picture, though far more complex in its composition and painted many years later, can be considered a variation on this theme.  The setting is again the steps of a mosque - possibly Sultan Ahmet or Süleymaniye in Istanbul - and again an intriguing narrative unfolds.  As in Rørbye's painting, the scribe is seated cross-legged, beside a beautifully ornamented wooden box, carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.  His service has evidently been requested by two women, each dressed in a feradge (a long tunic with loose sleeves, which hangs from shoulders to ankles) and wearing  that item of continual fascination among European artists, the yashmak.  (Worn in public and exclusive to Istanbul, the yashmak was a diaphanous veil made of two pieces of fine muslin or, in the nineteenth century, tarlatan.  One piece was bound around the head, over the forehead and down to the eyebrows.  It was knotted just above the nape of the neck and left to fall over the back, reaching to the waist.  The second piece covered the lower part of the face and was tied together with the first, giving the illusion of a single veil.)  Amadeo Preziosi's depictions of women's outdoor outfits in Turkey, in fact, painted at roughly the same time, bear a remarkable similarity to Gould's own (fig. 3).  That both men were in Istanbul in 1851 may warrant further examination.

The placement of one woman's hand on the shoulder of the other in Gould's picture suggests that this is an emotional moment, for one if not both of the veiled figures.  The torn bits of paper that are scattered near the bottom of the picture emphasize this point, as does the little still-life to which they lead - here there is a piece of unfinished business, a half-split piece of wood, and an axe to grind.  (The presumptive owner of these objects is resting just behind.) 

Gould's narrative continues in the background, with a pair of men conversing.  (Interestingly, this vignette is echoed by the pair of doves in Rörbye's work.)  The man on the left wears the tighter-fitting costume of a Turkish soldier, after the Tanzimat (reforms) of 1839.   To his left, and leaning against a column, is another figure in a fitted jacket and gathered salvars.  He is reading a letter, perhaps written by the elderly scribe.  The man's multi-colored striped turban stands in sharp contrast to the solid lime-green headpiece of the scribe - and rightly so. The latter suggests that the scribe is a shereef, or descendent of the Prophet, as only they were allowed to wear this culturally significant color (see Edward William Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1860, 31, 132).  Such a precise record of cultural practices was typical of Gould, and belies the short time he spent abroad.

Also typical of Gould is the inclusion of a pale, but rosy-cheeked, beardless, but mustachioed, figure (indeed, here he appears four times!), and an elegantly dressed black man, surveying the situation (figs. 4 and 5).  In the present work, this man can be presumed to be the guard or escort of the women.  Though this attribution does no more to resolve the narrative than any other detail of Gould's enigmatic composition, the presence of this figure adds drama to the scene.  And perhaps it is 'drama' that Gould's painting is ultimately about: despite its stillness of surface, the woven reed blinds, raised half way, give the semblance of parting curtains, and suggest a theatrical stage.

Gould's eventual arrival in New York in November 1851 was distinctly anticlimactic.  Rival portraits and prints of Lajos Kossuth had already begun to circulate, and Kossuth himself had already appeared.  Disappointed by these circumstances, and his subsequent lack of sales, Gould returned to Florence in 1852. 

Though he would not return to America until 1866, Gould continued to receive attention from American critics.  The November 1860 Crayon, a New York art magazine, carried a report from Florence which mentioned that, 'Gould has finished a carefully wrought Turkish scene, which I think will please the most fastidious Pre-Raphaelite.' In 1865, Gould painted two versions of Stall at the Arms Bazaar at Constantinople (fig. 4).  In 1866, he exhibited one version at the National Academy of Design in New York, and the other at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.  At the latter exhibition, the painting was criticized for its 'flaming vermilion' hues, which 'extinguished' the more subtle pictures beside it (New York Round Table, 5 May 1866).⁴  Though the cool gray hues of the present work might have appeased this writer to some degree, its tantalizing storyline would surely have caused all others to pale in comparison.

Gould would continue to produce Orientalist genre scenes throughout this life.  Most of these works are in private collections; the locations of many remain unknown.

¹ For Ackerman's biography of Gould, the most complete to date, see American Orientalists, pp 94-101.
² Though this is generally understood to be Gould's only trip to that country, there is some evidence that the artist visited Smyrna and Turkey again in 1854 (Ackerman, 98).
³ Letters between Powers and Gould are included in the Archives of American at the Smithsonian Museum.  Gould's portrait of Kossuth, along with other members of his suite, is now at the Atwater Kent Museum in Philadelphia.
⁴ Indeed, according to the same paper, one artist even withdrew his picture, 'rather than have its character destroyed by contiguity to the fiery atmosphere of the Turkish stall.'