A Mamelouk.

Dupré, Louis. Dupré, Louis. A Mamelouk. "Un Mamlouk." Paris "Imprimerie de Dondey-Dupré, Rue St Louis, No 46, Au Marais." 1825-37
Coloured lithograph of a Mamelouk from Louis Dupré's " Voyage â Athènes et â Constantinople...". Original hand colour; verso blank; blind stamp of Dupré as issued.
The image shows the heavily armed soldier seated with the Bospherous in the background.

Mamelouks were a warrior caste of slaves originally from Egypt. Islamic rulers created this warrior caste by collecting non-Muslim slave boys and training them as cavalry soldiers especially loyal to their owner and each other. They converted to Islam in the course of their training. The Mamluks were first used in Muslim armies in Baghdad by the Abbasid caliphs in the 9th cent. and quickly spread throughout the Muslim world. They eventually became so powerful that they managed to challenge the existence of the rulers who were their masters In 1250 Aybak became the first Mamelouk sultan and they would rule in Egypt and Syria for the next 250 years

Towards the end of the 15th cent. the Mamluks became involved in a war with the Ottoman Turks who captured Cairo in 1517. The Mamluks favored the cavalry and personal combat with sword and shield. They were no match for the Ottomans, who skillfully used artillery and their own slave infantry, the Janissaries, to defeat the Mamluks. The Ottoman ruler, Selim I, put an end to the Mamluk sultanate and established a small Ottoman garrison in Egypt. He did not, however, destroy the Mamluks as a class; they kept their lands, and Mamluk governors remained in control of the provinces and were even allowed to keep private armies.

In the 18th cent., when Ottoman power began to decline, the Mamluks were able to win back an increasing amount of self-rule. In 1769 one of their number, Ali Bey, even proclaimed himself sultan and independent of Constantinople. Although he fell in 1772, the Ottoman Turks still felt compelled to concede an ever greater measure of autonomy to the Mamluks and appointed a series of them as governors of Egypt. The Mamluks were defeated by Napoleon I during his invasion of Egypt in 1798, but their power as a class was ended only in 1811 by Muhammad Ali.

. Removed from a frame; Colours bright; even toning; some light spotting to margins.

Louis Dupré [1789-1837].

A pupil of Jacques-Louis David in Paris, Louis Dupré became resident in Rome and was appointed official painter to the prince Jerome Bonaparte, in 1811.

In 1819, Louis Dupré took a six-month tour of Greece and Turkey, accompanied by three affluent English gentlemen, Messrs Hyett, Vivian, and Hay. He was received by the French consul Fauvel in Athens and introduced into Greek society allowing him to make his paintings of important personalities of the time, both in Athens and in Joannina where he portayed Ali Pascha, his family and attendants. He continued to Thessaly and from there he sailed to Constantinople, where he made the acquaintance of Prince Michael Soutzo of Moldavia with whom he returned to Italy via Romania.
Upon arriving in Constantinople his companions left quickly, frightened by an outbreak of the plague. Dupré, however, remained and completed a series of watercolors. Nevertheless, the Englishmen funded Dupré's entire trip in exchange for these drawings, of which the artist also made duplicates that he exhibited at the Salon of 1824.
His work " Voyage â Athènes et â Constantinople"was published in 10 livraisons, in Paris in 1825 through to 1837, consisting of 40 lithographs: portraits, costumes and views of Athenian antiquities, based upon these drawings.
[Colnaghi of London pirated 2 of the portraits of Ali Pascha and published them before Dupré.]

The work became synonymous with the Greek War of Independence. The image of Mitropolos, holding the Greek standard symbolizes the Greek victory.

Louis Dupré's" Voyage à Athènes et à Constantinople "is a fascinating example of a travel book so contradictory it begs to be read against the grain. Taking the form of a costume album, it is based on notes and drawings made during the artist's voyage in the Ottoman Empire in 1819. However, the book was produced in France from 1825 to 1839, after the outbreak of Greek insurrections against Ottoman rule in 1821, a popular cause in France. This contextual gap between the moment of travel and the moment of production accounts for the work's contradictory aspects. It is overtly philhellenic, taking the side of the Greek rebels in their conflict with the Ottomans, seeing in the insurgence a revival of ancient ideals and culture. Yet key aspects of the work, particularly its costume images, tug against and undermine its underlying turcophobia and, ultimately, its nationalist, essentialist message of Hellenic regeneration. Dupré's colorful plates are striking and even hauntingly memorable, arresting the viewer's attention. His close-up depiction of boldly posed figures introduces an ambiguity into his travel account that belies its ideological frame. In particular, the costume images, resembling Ottoman-produced costume albums, implicitly celebrate a notion of empire-as-diversity that contradicts Dupré's nationalist text.
[Elizabeth Fraser, Ottoman Costume and Inclusive Empire: Louis Dupré in Ottoman Greece .Fashioning Identities symposium, Hunter College, NYC, October 2013]
Colas 916; Lipperheide 1434; Droulia 901; Navari/ Blackmer: 517; Sotheby's/Blackmer 559 330 by 257mm (13 by 10 inches) image without title; page:520x393mm.   ref: 2867  €1000