There may also be mentioned Charles Amédée van Loo’s pictures: “A Sultana’s Toilet,” “The Sultana ordering the Odalisks some Fancy Work,” “The Favourite Sultana with her Women attended by White and Black Eunuchs,” “Odalisks dancing before the Sultan and Sultana,” most of which were drawn for the king from 1775 to 1777, and were intended as models for tapestries; and also the portrait of Madame de Pompadour as an odalisk, “The Odalisk before her Embroidery Frame,” and “A Negress bringing the Sultana’s Coffee,” by the same painter. To these may be added Lancret’s Turkish sketches, the drawings and pastels of Liotard, who left Geneva for Paris about 1762, then lived in the ports of the Levant and Constantinople, and came back to Vienna, London, and Holland, and whose chief pictures are: “A Frankish Lady of Pera receiving a Visit,” “A Frankish Lady of Galata attended by her Slave”; and also Fragonard’s “New Odalisks introduced to the Pasha,” his sepia drawings, Marie Antoinette’s so-called Turkish furniture, etc.
In music any sharp, brisk rhythm was styled alla turca—that is, in the Turkish style. We also know a Turkish roundelay by Mozart, and a Turkish march in Beethoven’s “Ruins of Athens.”
At the end of the eighteenth century, not only did people imitate the gorgeousness and vivid colours of Turkish costumes, but every Turkish whim was the fashion of the day. Ingres, too, took from Turkey the subjects of some of his best and most famous paintings: “The Odalisk lying on her Bed,” “The Turkish Bath,” etc.
Lastly, the Great War should teach us, in other respects too, not to underrate those who became our adversaries owing to the mistake they made in joining the Central Powers. For the “Sick Man” raised an army of nearly 1,600,000 men, about a million of whom belonged to fighting units, and the alliance of Turkey with Germany was a heavy blow to the Allied Powers: Russia was blockaded, the Tsar Ferdinand was enabled to attack Serbia, the blockade of Rumania brought on the peace of Bukharest, Turkish troops threatened Persia, owing to which German emissaries found their way into Afghanistan, General Kress von Kressenstein and his Ottoman troops attacked the Suez Canal, etc. All this gave the Allies a right to enforce on Turkey heavy terms of peace, but did not justify either the harsh treatment inflicted upon her before the treaty was signed, or some of the provisions of that treaty. It would be a great mistake to look upon Turkey as of no account in the future, and to believe that the nation can no longer play an important part in Europe.
[7] Midhat Pacha, Sa vie et son œuvre, by his son Ali-Haydar-Midhat Bey (Paris, 1908).
[8] Janina was occupied by Greece in 1912-18.
[9] Cf. A. Boppe, Les Peintres du Bosphore au dix-huitième siècle (Paris, 1919).