Addison Thomas Millar

Private collection, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Acquired in Butler, Pennsylvania by the present owner

A student of Benjamin Constant and Giovanni Boldini at the Académie Julian in Paris, the American artist Addison Millar achieved his best Orientalist works after a trip to Algiers in 1895 with his American teacher William Merritt Chase. It was on this trip that Millar saw the Admiralty Palace in the harbor of Algiers, a 16th Century construction built by the Ottoman Admiral Kheireddin Barbarossa (circa 1478–1546). Barbarossa captured Algiers from the Spaniards in 1516 and became governor of Algiers from where he was able to capture more land around the Mediterranean on behalf of the Ottoman Empire. 

Millar was able to render the Admiral's Palace before the French redesigned and enlarged the harbor around the turn of the century, thus showing an almost original view of the building as it was initially conceived.