A watercolour showing Sultan Mustafa III giving an audience to the English Ambassador in Topkapi Palace, Constantinople. The ambassador and his suite are wearing Turkish robes.

This watercolour shows the British ambassador (likely to be Henry Grenville), dressed in a yellow fur-lined robe, during an audience with Sultan Mustafa III (r.1754–74) in Topkapi Palace, Constantinople, which was the official residence of the Ottoman Sultan. Incongruously, the ambassador and his entourage still wear their tri-corn hats and bag-wigs with the Turkish robes. RCIN 917142 depicts the Ambassador meeting the Grand Vizier, which took place before his meeting with the Sultan and for which the Ambassador was wearing English court dress. The Sultan wears a turban differentiated from the others by the incorporation of the sorguç, an expensive decoration of feather and jewels.

This watercolour and its pair, 917142, were made as a result of the English artist Francis Smith accompanying Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (1732–71) on his tour of the east in 1763–4, which included Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire. The watercolours made by Smith were used as the basis for engravings which illustrated Lord Baltimore’s account of his travels entitled 'Tour to the East in the Years 1763 and 1764', first published in 1767.

Text partly adapted from Style and Society: Dressing the Georgians, 2023