Lot 7: View of Constantinople with camels watering and travellers on a track in the foreground

William Purser (1789-1852)
View of Constantinople with camels watering and travellers on a track in the foreground
inscribed 'Constantinople/where the Great Gun/of those days enabled/the Mussulmans [sic] to effect/its conquest by/battering down the walls' (on the reverse)
pencil and watercolour, with gum arabic
17 7/8 x 24 in. (45.4 x 61 cm.)

Purser was a painter and architect who travelled throughout his life around Europe and the near East, recording the sights that he saw in oil and watercolour, and exhibiting a selection of these pictures at the Royal Academy between 1820 and 1834.