Beschreibung:

John Frederick Lewis R.A.London 1804 - 1876 Walton-on-ThamesPortrait of General Jochmus Pasha, circa 1841
Watercolour and bodycolour, heightened with black chalk, on buff-coloured paper;signed and inscribed lower right: General [… probably Yochmas] / J Lewis / Constantinople444 by 290 mmCondition reportThe medium remains well preserved and strong, demonstrating all of Lewis' extraordinary qualities as a draughtsman. The sheet, as is so often the case with his drawings, has discoloured, and many pastel restorations are visbile. At the extreme upper edge there are further spots of discolouration. The sheet is laid down.
The lot is sold in the condition it is in at the time of sale. The condition report is provided to assist you with assessing the condition of the lot and is for guidance only. Any reference to condition in the condition report for the lot does not amount to a full description of condition. The images of the lot form part of the condition report for the lot. Certain images of the lot provided online may not accurately reflect the actual condition of the lot. In particular, the online images may represent colors and shades which are different to the lot's actual color and shades. The condition report for the lot may make reference to particular imperfections of the lot but you should note that the lot may have other faults not expressly referred to in the condition report for the lot or shown in the online images of the lot. The condition report may not refer to all faults, restoration, alteration or adaptation. The condition report is a statement of opinion only. For that reason, the condition report is not an alternative to taking your own professional advice regarding the condition of the lot. NOTWITHSTANDING THIS ONLINE CONDITION REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE/BUSINESS APPLICABLE TO THE RESPECTIVE SALE.ProvenanceSale, London, Christie’s, The Remaining Works of that distinguished artist, John F. Lewis, R.A. deceased, [J.F. Lewis studio sale], 5 May 1877, lot 321, as Le General Yochmas Pacha, bt. ‘Young’[bt.in], Marian Lewis, the artist's wife,sale, London, Christie’s, Fifty Remaining works of that distinguished artist J.F. Lewis, R.A., 3 May 1897, lot 30, as Yochmas Pascha (General), bt. ? ‘Ainslie’ [bt.in], Marian Lewis, given by her to Edward Sinclair Gooch (1879-1915) in 1903, as a wedding present;by descent to his daughter, Mary Bridget Gooch, who married Lt. Col Patrick Charles Henry Grant (1900-1975) in 1925,by descent to their daughter, Mary Eva Grant,sale, Glasgow, The Great Western Auctions Ltd, 18 June 2022, lot 1037LiteratureArt Journal, 'Mr. Lewis’s Sketches', 1 August 1851, p. 222, as No.15 “General Jochmus Pacha”;
Letter from Lewis to John Scott 14 April 1857, listed as 2. General Jockmass Pacha / 20gs (Constantinople), (Private Collection, Istanbul).ExhibitedProbably, London, Mr Wass’s Gallery, Old Bond Street, June-July 1851;
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, 1853, no. 500, as HE the General Ischnues Pacha.Catalogue noteJohn Frederick Lewis’s remarkable portrait of an eminent General in the Ottoman army, painted in Constantinople, c.1841, has descended in a branch of the artist’s family, and has only recently come to light. Until its rediscovery earlier this year, it had not been on the market since 1895 and was known only from the 19th-century sources mentioned above. Although the name ‘Yochmas’, as Lewis probably spelt it, is unfortunately so indistinct in the inscription on the watercolour as to be indecipherable, the legible part, ‘General’ and ‘Constantinople’, and indeed the costume of the sitter, confirm, beyond reasonable doubt, that this is indeed the portrait of Jochmus Pasha that Lewis is known to have painted. It shows the distinguished figure of August Giacomo Jochmus in the ornate Ottoman uniform of a Pasha of Two Horsetails (iki tuğlu Paşa), with red embroidered cloak and a fez with blue tassels. He is portrayed in profile, with his head turned slightly towards, but not engaging with, the viewer, his expression of hauteur, commensurate with his high status. His features are comparable to the more ostentatious oil painting of the General, wearing a more elaborate costume, made by Prince Carl zu Wied (1785–1864) in 1849 (Private Collection).
August Giacomo Jochmus, Freiherr von Cotignola (1808-1881) is now primarily known for his active role as Chief of Staff of the Ottoman forces in the conflict culminating in the Siege of Acre in 1840. Yet, he was in many other ways a remarkable figure, taking part in several major events in the Europe of the first part of the nineteenth century.
Born in Hamburg, he was destined to become a merchant, but instead went to Paris where he began his military studies. Aged 19, he joined the Greek war of liberation, and took part in the campaigns from 1827 to 1829. By 1828 he was aide-de-camp to the commander-in-chief of the Greek army, General Sir Richard Church. In 1832 he was employed in the Greek Ministry of War. Dissension within the new Greek government eventually caused him to go to England in 1835 to join the British Auxiliary Legion, on the recommendation of Admiral Edmund Lyons, British plenipotentiary at Athens.
The Legion was a British military force sent to Spain to support the Liberals and Queen Isabella II of Spain against the Carlists, and Jochmus became a brigadier general after only two years. He returned to England in 1838, and was then sent to Constantinople to prepare for the probable war in Syria. In mid-July 1840, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Anglo-Austrian-Turkish Army, with the prized honorific of Pasha of Two Horsetails (iki tuğlu Paşa).
Muhammad Ali of Egypt had sent an invasion force overland under the command of his son Ibrahim. They had advanced as far as the Lebanon when the combined forces of the British Army and Navy, the Turks and the Austrians, finally bombarded and captured St. Jean d'Acre in 1840. During the subsequent negotiated retreat of the Egyptians, the Ottoman Government naturally wanted the destruction of Ibrahim’s army, and ordered Jochmus to attack, which he was more than willing to do. Lord Ponsonby, the Ambassador to Turkey, supported their action, but was opposed by Commodore Sir Charles Napier. The British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, finally intervened. This sparked off a war of words, as both Jochmus and Napier subsequently published their own versions of events, using their letters and dispatches (Napier, The War in Syria and Jochmus, ‘The Syrian war’ in Gesammelte Schriften, see below).
As a senior commander in the Ottoman army, Jochmus remained in Constantinople until 1848, when the revolution in Germany prompted his return there. On 17 March 1849, the regent Archduke John of Austria appointed him Foreign and Navy Minister. However, he resigned after the dissolution of the Reich Ministry in December 1849. He used the following years to travel through Europe, then to Egypt, Arabia, India, China and America. In 1859, the Austrian Emperor gave him the title Freiherr von Cotignola. In 1866 he was belatedly appointed Field Marshal, but there was not time to see action in the field. He returned to private life. A polyglot, his collected works (Gesammelte Schriften) published in 1883, include texts in a cogent literary English which is indistinguishable from that of contemporary British statesmen.
Exactly how and when Lewis encountered Jochmus in Constantinople is not recorded. Lewis’s arrival in the city had been noted by his fellow artist, Sir David Wilkie in October 1840: ‘We have encountered John Lewis – from Greece and Smyrna. He is making numbers of drawings’ (Wilkie to his brother Thomas, in Allan Cunningham, The Life of Sir David Wilkie 1843, vol.3). The presence of these two celebrated artists in Constantinople at the same time prompted the popular British journal, the Art Union, to observe: ‘Sir David Wilkie is still at Constantinople; John Lewis is there also: they are no doubt doing that which the Pacha of Egypt could not do, and will make a good “division of the Turkish empire” between them’ (December 1840, p. 194). Like Wilkie and other members of the European community in Constantinople at this time, Lewis is likely to have been based in Pera, the European and Levantine part of the city, but he also made many sketches of the mosques and markets in old ‘Stamboul’, on the other side of the Golden Horn.
Lewis’s portraits are rare, but during his time in Constantinople, 1840-41, he depicted another important foreign resident, the British Ambassador, John, Viscount Ponsonby (c.1770-1855), a controversial figure, renowned for his good looks (two almost identical versions of the portrait are in a private collection in Istanbul and the UK Government Art Collection). This connection with Jochmus’s patron may have led to Lewis’s portrait of the general who played so significant a part in the Syrian campaign. An additional factor may have been the portrait by Wilkie of another foreigner whose contribution to the Syrian campaign was of equal importance, Admiral Sir Baldwin Wake Walker (painted in November and December 1840, two versions, the first, private collection, the second, private collection, Istanbul). He too had been seconded by the British, joining the Ottoman navy in 1838, becoming effectively its commander-in-chief, and known as Walker Bey and later Yaver Paşa for his leading role in the Siege of Acre. Lewis’s portrait may be seen as the military counterpart to Wilkie’s portrayal of the British naval hero.
The portrait of Jochmus was given by Marian Lewis, the artist’s widow, as a wedding present in 1903 to Edward Sinclair Gooch (1879-1915), grandson of Lewis’s sister, Ann, and her husband the Revd Charles Stonhouse Rector of Frimley in Surrey, where Lewis and his parents are buried. Gooch himself, of the 7th Hussars and Berkshire Yeomanry, also had a distinguished military career, dying of wounds sustained during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.
We are very grateful to Charles Newton and Briony Llewellyn for cataloguing this lot. Bibliography for General Jochmus Pasha Georg Martin Thomas, ed., ‘August Jochmus, The Syrian war and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1848; in reports, documents, and correspondences, etc’, in August von Jochmus’ Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: A. Cohn, 1883, Vol. 4.Commodore Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B.,The War in Syria &c., London: John W. Parker West Strand. 1862, vol.1.‘Jochmus von Cotignola, August Freiherr’ von Oscar Criste in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, herausgegeben von der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 50 (1905), pp.745–46.Jonathan Parry, Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022, pp.198 ff.