A Coffee House in Tophane

A Thomas Allom composition which appears in the first volume of Robert Walsh’s book Constantinople and Scenery of Seven Churches of Asia Minor is “The Coffee-House”. This is an oil copy of the composition by Jivanian. Written by the Robert Walsh, who served as the private priest of British Ambassador Lord Strangford after 1820, the book was published in two volumes in London in 1838. It includes engravings produced largely from Allom’s works. The engravings in the book, which was later also published in French, acted as important visual resources on Istanbul and were used as models by numerous artists. Various copies by unknown painters of the same composition exist in a number of private collections in Turkey. In the corresponding text, Robert Walsh provides information on the interior organization and decoration of the coffeehouses, and relates various details ranging from making music and smoking pipes to the plays of the meddah (story tellers).