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Lot Essay
Fenton visited the Near East in 1855, but it was in his London studio in the summer of 1858, that he made a series of Orientalist studies, using carefully assembled props and costumes, and a small group of models. He is known to have exhibited only a handful of these studies between December 1858 and April 1859 in Edinburgh, London and Paris. Gordon Baldwin, Associate Curator of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, has identified 51 different negatives in the series of which there are extant prints. Prints from these negatives are extremely rare. The majority of the surviving prints from this Orientalist series come from the albums thought to have been Fenton's own, known as the "grey paper" albums, which were sold at auction at Christie's between 1978 and 1982.
The seated model in this image is the same man as the central figure in another image titled Pasha and Bayadère. It has been suggested previously that this is Fenton himself, and one certainly detects a resemblance to the 1855 self-portrait in Zouave uniform, reproduced as frontispiece in Baldwin's book.
Gordon Baldwin has confirmed that only two other prints from this negative are known. One is in the collection of the Wilson Centre for Photography, London and the other is in an album belonging to the Royal Engineers.
The seated model in this image is the same man as the central figure in another image titled Pasha and Bayadère. It has been suggested previously that this is Fenton himself, and one certainly detects a resemblance to the 1855 self-portrait in Zouave uniform, reproduced as frontispiece in Baldwin's book.
Gordon Baldwin has confirmed that only two other prints from this negative are known. One is in the collection of the Wilson Centre for Photography, London and the other is in an album belonging to the Royal Engineers.