The Turkish Family
In The Turkish Family, the term Turkish is likely a placeholder for a portrait of a modern Sephardic Jewish family like that of the artist. Notably, the family members wear modern European fashions, particularly common among the non-Turkish bourgeoisies of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. One man wears a top hat, while another wears the fez, a marker of loyalty to the Ottoman Empire and of aspirations to modernization and liberalization in Ottoman political and civic life.
Credits
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.
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