Henri-Guillaume Schlesinger

Henri-Guillaume Schlesinger, originally Wilhelm Heinrich Schlesinger (6 August 1814, in Frankfurt am Main – 21 February 1893, in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French portrait and genre painter of German birth.

He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and was originally active in that city.

During a visit to Istanbul in 1837, he was commissioned to do several official paintings of Sultan Mahmud II, including a large equestrian portrait and one of the Sultan wearing Western-style clothing, which is now on display at the Topkapi Palace Museum.

One was donated to King Louis-Philippe by Mustafa Reşid Pasha, who was then serving as Ambassador to France, and may now be seen at Versailles.

The following year, he was named a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor[1] and became a French citizen in 1870, just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.