Currently not on view
Man Wearing a Turban,
1760
Thomas Frye, Irish, ca. 1710–1762
2015-10
In 1760 the pastel portraitist and porcelain manufacturer Thomas Frye turned to mezzotint. This work belongs to a set of twelve expressive and dramatically lit male and female heads, remarkable at the time for their size and close-up viewpoint. In publishing these prints, based on his own drawings, he advertised them as “Fancy Heads . . . Drawn from Nature and as Large as Life.” Like most of the sitters in the series, this enigmatic gentleman is not identifiable. His lavish and exotic attire vividly evokes the contemporary fascination with Ottoman dress and culture, which inspired portraits of turbaned British aristocrats.
Information
Title
Man Wearing a Turban
Dates
1760
Maker
Medium
Mezzotint on cream laid paper
Dimensions
plate: 50.4 × 35 cm (19 13/16 × 13 3/4 in.)
sheet: 54.7 × 37.8 cm (21 9/16 × 14 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Surdna Fund
Object Number
2015-10
Place Made
Europe, England, London
Inscription
Inscribed in ink below plate, lower right and left: 486 [?] / 9 1//11 [?]
Printed, lower left and right: T, Frye Pictor Inv,t & Sculp,t / 1760,
Printed, lower center: BW:W / 1834
Printed, lower left corner: BW [possibly Bernard Wilhelm]
Marks/Labels/Seals
Collector Fredrique Wilhelmina Wohlfahrt's stamp, lower center: (Lugt 1055b)
Watermark: Two rows of letters [indecipherable]
Reference Numbers
Chaloner Smith 13; Le Blanc 5
Type
Materials
Techniques
- John Boydell, Catalogue raisonné d'un recueil d'estampes d'aprés les plus beaux tableaux qui soient en Angleterre (Londres: Chez le proprietaire, graveur, & marchand d'estampes, 1779-83)., no. v, p. 193
- Georg Kasper Nagler, Neues allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon; oder, Nachrichten von dem leben und den werken der maler, bildhauer, baumeister, kupferstecher, etc., (München: E. A. Fleischmann, 1835-52)., p. 515
- J. Chaloner Smith, One Hundred and Twenty-five Portraits in Illustration of British Mezzotinto Portraits (London: Henry Sotheran & Co, 1883).,
- John Chaloner Smith, British mezzotinto portraits; being a descriptive catalogue of these engravings from the introduction of the art to the early part of the present century (London: H. Sotheran & Co., 1883)., no. 13, p. 520
- Charles E. Russell, English mezzotint portraits and their states from the invention of mezzotinting until the early part of the 19th century (London: Halton & T. Smith, Ltd., 1926)., no. 13
-
Constance McPhee, “Joseph Wright’s Pastel Portrait of a Woman Part II: Sources, Meaning, and Context,” Metropolitan Museum journal 44 (2009)
, p. 103; p.105, fig. 21 - "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2015," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 75/76 (2016-17): 102-125., p. 114
