Walter Gould

With a letter of introduction provided by the British Ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, he was able to meet Kossuth and paint his portrait.

While there, he visited Istanbul and created some of the Orientalist works for which he is best remembered, as well as portraits, including one of the Grand Vizier, Mustafa Reşid Pasha.

He would continue to paint some Orientalist genre scenes, in addition to many portraits; holding a major exhibit in 1866 at the National Academy of Design which was not, however, well-received by the critics.

In his later years, a visit from his old friend, Moncure Conway, found him with dimming eyesight from painting too many portrait miniatures, and fond of talking about the past.

A year after his death, his relatives made a gift of some of his works to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but the great majority are in private collections.

Self-portrait, in imitation of Joshua Reynolds (1849)
The Public Scribe