Bearded Man in Oriental Costume

Ozias Humphrey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This delicate watercolor of an elderly Arab, which may represent the Tunisian ambassador to the British Court of St. James's, was made about 1780 by Humphrey, a portrait painter and miniaturist. He devoted his attention to the assertive profile and turbaned head of the sitter, rendering the robes and setting more broadly with rapid pen strokes and pale blue, pink, brown, and gray washes. In the eighteenth century, Tunisia was nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but was ruled in effective independence by the Husseinite beys. As one of the "Barbary States" of North Africa, it patronized pirates who did not hesitate to capture unprotected European vessels in the Mediterranean, seize their cargo, and hold their passengers for ransom. To allay this threat, the British government made annual payments to the bey of Tunis; thus, the latter's ambassador would have been a significant figure in London diplomatic circles.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art