This mundane scene of a carriage ride through an urban street draws inspiration from anthropological drawings by European artists that sought to visually document Ottoman customs and everyday life. Ottoman painters increasingly tapped into this genre so that by the eighteenth century they had established a keen sense of which topics would appeal to European consumers. Such a luxurious red carriage with golden screens captures a fitting transport for an elite Ottoman woman to gaze out at the world while maintaining her anonymity safely within. This vehicle also exemplifies the work of talented painters who decorated carriage surfaces with the same pink roses that one might find on the frescoed walls of a wealthy harem. The painting further reveals the rising popularity of imported media from abroad, such as oil on canvas.

The mid-eighteenth century brought a wave of new trends in Ottoman painting, including experiments in oil on canvas, a medium often associated with European art. The first instances of its use appear among the works of Greek and Armenian artists, some of whom were reportedly trained in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Within a few decades, however, oil gradually spread to overshadow opaque watercolor as the paint of choice across elite Ottoman workshops by the end of the eighteenth century. Unlike earlier paintings sold to travelers over the seventeenth century (such as M.85.237.50), which favored solid color blocks with sparingly drawn details, later artists applied new approaches of gradient shading and modeling to genre scenes favored among European consumers, including character studies and social customs.

The artist(s) behind this work created a composition in the style and spirit of Jean Baptist Vanmour (d. 1737), the Flemish-French artist who accompanied the French ambassador Marquis Charles de Ferriol (d. 1722) to Istanbul in 1699. Vanmour went on to work in Istanbul close to forty years where he became known for his portraits of the sultan, his retinue, and the city’s diverse population. Historians have suggested that Vanmour also may have trained artists in Istanbul, including the Greeks and Armenians mentioned above, who often engaged with European travelers in the major port cities of the empire. In addition to his famous portraits and procession scenes, Vanmour took a particular interest in documenting moments from Ottoman daily life, much like the scene depicted here. Though the original owner of this painting remains unknown, by this period such a work could have found patrons among travelers or the cosmopolitan merchant families of the Ottoman empire.