SAMUEL LEIGH, LONDON, CIRCA 1831

This rare panorama provides a magnificent continuous strip view of early 19th-century Istanbul. It is a first and apparently only edition. The publisher, Samuel Leigh, is known for issuing a number of city panoramas with descriptive text. This one can be dated by the quarto pamphlet, Companion to the Panorama of Constantinople (London, 1831), designed to accompany it (not present here). The panorama itself was also issued in an uncoloured version. Intriguingly, this appears to be Pitman's only recorded work as a travelling artist.

Another copy of the work sold at Sotheby's, London, 10 November 2009, lot 83. There the note stated that only three copies, including one in the Atabey sale, and another in the Blackmer sale, could be traced at auction since 1975.