Banditti of Kurdistan Assisting Georgians in Surprising and Carrying off Circassian Women
Date:
1827
Materials & Techniques:
Graphite and brown wash, squared and numbered for transfer on moderately thick, slightly textured, beige wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 22 1/2 × 32 5/8 inches (57.2 × 82.9 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.7.2
Gallery Label:
Hayter's career began inauspiciously when he ran away from his studies at the Royal Academy Schools at sixteen to join the Navy, before being returned to his studies through the intervention of his father. Initially a miniaturist, Hayter was appointed portrait and history painter to Queen Victoria (1819-1901) on her accession to the throne in 1837 and, at David Wilkie's death while returning from the Middle East in 1841, Painter in Principal to the Queen. This drawing, which has been "squared" for transfer as a painting or print, depicts a scene that is in all probability imaginary. Circassian women, from the northern Caucasus, were reputed for their beauty and said to be favorites in the harems of the Ottoman Empire. As British artists began to travel to the region in the 1840s, Circassian women (or European women standing in for them) were often chosen as subjects. The eroticized violence of this scene combines an interest in military costume and the imagined sexual mores of the Orient. Gallery label for Pearls to pyramids: British visual culture and the Levant, 1600-1820 (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-02-07 - 2008-04-28)
