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Sidi Hadji Abdurrahman Adja (1720–1792)
Richard Cosway (British, 1742–1821)
1786
- Medium
- graphite, watercolor, red chalk on paper
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Matted: 38.4 x 28.6 cm (15 1/8 x 11 1/4 in.); Sheet: 33.2 x 24.9 cm (13 1/16 x 9 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- England
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Richard Cosway was a prolific painter in London, most well-known for his portrait miniatures and drawings, which he made both on commission and as personal exercises or mementos. Cosway and his wife, Maria Hadfield Cosway, held a fashionable salon at their London residence, and may have invited the likely subject of this drawing, the ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Hadji Abdurrahman Adja (1720-1792). Abdurrahman Adja was in London in 1786, arrived to improve Tripoli’s reputation with Great Britain. Cosway portrayed the ambassador in a fleeting moment with eyes closed, making sure to capture the fine beard and robes for which he was much admired by London society.
