THOMAS ALLOM

ALLOM, Thomas (1804-1872).

[Three original watercolours for Allom and Emma
Reeve’s Character and Costume in Turkey and Italy]. [Constantinople: circa 1836].

Each graphite, pen-and-ink and watercolour, on thick wove paper. Uniform French mats.

Housed together in a black morocco backed box.

The watercolours comprise of:
1) Halt of a Caravan: Scene between Sardis and Philadelphia, Asia Minor. Sheet size: 29 x 22 cm.

2) A Turkish Scribe. Sheet size: 29 x 22 cm.

3) The Slave Merchant, Constantinople. Sheet size: 29 x 22 cm.

[With:] Hand-coloured lithographed plates of the above from Allom and Reeve’s
Character and Costume in Turkey and Italy.

Original watercolours of scenes in Turkey by a noted artist, the studies for plates in a published work.
“The circumstances of his travels in the Levant have never been defined, but it was known that Allom spent some time in the East c. 1836-37. However according to an advert for Walsh’s Constantinople in Carne’s Syria and the Holy Land, Allom spent nine months resident in Constantinople and its environs at the expense of the publisher Fisher”
(Atabey 16).
Allom’s final published book contained 8 uncoloured views in Constantinople, including lithographs after the present three watercolours.