Object Details
Artist
Thomas Hicks, 18 Oct 1823 - 8 Oct 1890
Sitter
Bayard Taylor, 11 Jan 1825 - 19 Dec 1878
Exhibition Label
Born Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
Bayard Taylor, a well-known author and lecturer in the United States during the middle of the nineteenth century, began his literary career as a poet and travel writer. In his popular Poems of the Orient (1854), he penned romanticized impressions of the people and places he encountered while traveling through North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia between 1851 and 1853. The year after publishing this collection, Taylor commissioned the artist Thomas Hicks to paint his portrait.
First exhibited under the title Morning in Damascus, the painting shows the poet dressed in Arab attire and lounging with a hookah pipe while on a hilltop overlooking the Syrian city. Taylor, who was born into a Pennsylvania Quaker family, often circulated images of himself masquerading in foreign garb as a way to promote himself as worldly and to create an air of authenticity around his fanciful accounts of distant lands.
Provenance
(Berry-Hill Galleries, New York); purchased 1976 NPG
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Date
1855
Object number
NPG.76.6
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Type
Painting
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
62.2 x 75.6cm (24 1/2 x 29 3/4")
Frame: 76.2 x 88.6 x 6.4cm (30 x 34 7/8 x 2 1/2")
Place
United States\New York\Kings\New York City
See more items in
National Portrait Gallery Collection
Location
Currently not on view
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Topic
Exterior
Equipment\Smoking Implements
Home Furnishings\Furniture\Carpet
Costume\Headgear\Turban
Costume\Headgear\Hat\Cap\Fez
Human Figures\Servant
Bayard Taylor: Male
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Literature\Writer
Bayard Taylor: Politics and Government\Diplomat
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Education and Scholarship\Educator\Professor\University
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Literature\Writer\Poet
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Journalism and Media\Newspaper publisher
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Journalism and Media\Newspaper editor
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Literature\Writer\Novelist
Bayard Taylor: Arts and Culture\Recreation\Traveler
Portrait
Link to Original Record
Record ID
npg_NPG.76.6