Louis Comfort Tiffany

Reverend James Tuttle Smith, 1879

Collection of Sheila and Edward Malakoff

Christie's New York, December 9, 2014, lot 838

"Catalogue of the Seventh Annual Exhibition of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors," E. Wells Sackett & Bro., New York, 1874, p. 12

"American Society of Painters in Water Colors," New York Evening Post, January 28, 1874, p. 3

"Water-Color Paintings" The New York Daily Graphic, February 7, 1874, p. 663

"Fine Arts: The Water-Color Exhibition-Second Notice," New York Times, February 8, 1874, p. 3

"Art Matters," New York Herald, February 12, 1874, p. 9

"The Water Color Exhibition," New York Evening Telegram, February 16, 1874, p. 1

"The Water Color Exhibition," New York Evening Post, February 17, 1874, p. 1

"Art at the Century," New York Evening Post, March 9, 1874, p. 4

“American Water-Colors: The Display at Philadelphia,” New York Times, June 18, 1876, p. 10

Official Catalog, Part II-Art Gallery Annexes and Outdoor Works of Art United States Centennial Commission, 1876, exh. cat., United States Centennial Commission, Philadelphia, 1876, Part II, Department IV, p. 25, no. 280

American Society of Painters in Water Colors, New York, 1874, no. 179

The Centennial International Exhibition, Philadelphia, May – November 1876, no. 549e

The subject of Dignity in Servitude, which was first exhibited in 1874, is a stately Black man attired in traditional Ottoman clothing of the sort that had been displayed at the Vienna International Exposition of 1873 and then published in an accompanying illustrated book, Les Costumes Populaires de la Turquie en 1873. Tiffany did not identify the setting, but it is now known to be the public fountain at Azap Kapisi in Istanbul, a site that was commercially photographed by Abdullah Frères.

There is some evidence that Tiffany briefly visited Turkey in 1876, but no indication of any earlier date. Clearly, his composition was an imaginary pastiche based on commercial photographs and perhaps prints, an approach that was common amongst Orientalist painters, especially Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) and Henri Regnault (1843–1871), whose work Tiffany admired.

Upon further inspection, it appears that this painting depicts a kizlar agha, the head of the eunuchs who guarded the imperial harem and whose servitude was to the Ottoman sultan. This subject could be found in both eighteenth-century prints and paintings, as well as ethnographic photographs such as Pascal Sebah’s Eunuque du Sultan.

Dignity in Servitude was first owned by Reverend James Tuttle Smith who had been an Army Chaplain during the Civil War and then, for a period that included the Reconstruction era, a rector of the Episcopalian Church of the Holy Sepulchre (now Church of the Resurrection) in New York City. Smith probably appreciated the decorative richness of this Orientalist watercolor, but also Tiffany’s subtext: the inherent humanity of all enslaved Blacks, including those recently emancipated in the United States.

–RAM