Standing Turkish Youth

William James Müller

1844 · Watercolor over graphite · Drawings and Prints

In this vigorous, vibrant study, William James Müller (a British painter of Prussian descent) captured the appearance of a young man he encountered on his travels in Lycia, in southwestern Anatolia, where the artist journeyed with the archaeologist Charles Fellows in the early 1840s. Müller applied loose, broad, wet washes to his thick, textured artist's board with some rapidity, forming the sky with fluid strokes of blue and capturing the appearance of an orange tree with a few succinct circles of bright fruit. Indeed, Müller appears to have slowed his hand only to describe the figure's distinctive shirt, a vivid patchwork of striped fabrics in ocher, purple, and red.

Artist

William James Müller

Date

1844

Medium

Watercolor over graphite

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Rogers Fund, 1971