The Bosphorus from the Great Burial Ground Pera

This picturesque folio lithograph is from John Frederick Lewis’s Lewis’s Illustrations of Constantinople: Made During a Residence in That City in the Years 1835-6. The work was published in London in 1838 by T. McLean, D. & P. Colnaghi, and John F. Lewis.

This rare work illustrated the city’s port and custom house, mosques, Pasha’s residence, and several other locations during the Ottoman Empire. The lithographs were all completed by Lewis after illustrations by Coke Smyth. “Lewis travelled in the Levant, but these drawings were not made by him. They were made by the artist Coke Smyth who was in Constantinople several years before Lewis visited that city.” (Blackmer)