Constantinople, le caïque de la sultane

Félix Ziem's 'The Sultana's Caïque' (1885) depicts the royal watercraft of the Ottoman court — the elegant gilded caique reserved for the harem and the female members of the Ottoman imperial household — creating an image that combined the fascination with Ottoman royal customs that animated much French Orientalism with Ziem's mastery of marine subjects. The sultana's caique was a fantasy object for French audiences who knew of it through travelers' accounts and diplomatic reports but would never see it — a floating fragment of the forbidden world of the harem transported onto the Bosphorus.

Ziem gives the sultana's caique the lustrous, gilded treatment appropriate to a royal vessel — the gold and lacquer of the imperial boat contrasting with the silver-blue of the Bosphorus waters. His characteristic luminous palette and water handling are deployed at their fullest, the subject's inherent visual richness matching his decorative sensibility. The architectural backdrop of the Istanbul shore provides the geographical context that completes the Orientalist fantasy.