Art Institute of Chicago

Selim Kahn III, from Portraits of the Emperors of Turkey

John Young

Date

1815

Medium

Mezzotint, hand-colored with brush and watercolor, on ivory wove paper

Culture

England

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

The engraver John Young produced several books of mezzotints after paintings in British collections. The twenty-eighth sultan, Selim III, who ruled from 1789 to 1807, commissioned him to make a series of mezzotints after portraits of the emperors of Turkey based on an album of 19th-century miniatures. Production halted when janissaries assassinated the sultan in 1807. Mahmoud II ascended the throne, and Young resumed work in 1810. The 28 chronological mezzotints in this unusually expansive example of the Ottoman Empire’s patronage of Western artists place Selim III last. Young maintained the medallion format of the first 20 miniatures, adding Westernizing touches throughout.

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