Fashionable Figures, with a Man in Turkish Costume

British · 1733–35

Medium

Oil on plaster, mounted on aluminum honeycomb panel

Original size

81.6 × 168.3 cm (32 1/8 × 66 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Fashionable Figures, with a Man in Turkish Costume is a vivid snapshot of Georgian-era social performance, capturing the European craze for Turquerie at its height. Painted by an unidentified British artist between 1733 and 1735, the work reflects a moment when Ottoman-inspired dress was a mark of cosmopolitan taste among the English aristocracy and upper classes. The figures are rendered with careful attention to costume and deportment — the kind of studied elegance that characterized both masquerade culture and portrait painting of the period. That the work was executed in oil on plaster, rather than canvas, speaks to its original architectural context, likely commissioned as part of a decorative interior scheme, which gives it a grounded, mural-like presence distinct from easel painting of the same era. The Turquerie fashion had reached fever pitch in Britain partly through Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wore Ottoman dress upon her return from Constantinople in 1718 and made it fashionable among her circle — a trend this painting reflects directly. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is made to the same dimensions as the original, with each layer of paint built up by hand, preserving the warmth and texture that make the figures feel immediate and alive rather than archival.