This young gent is a Bashi-Bazouk. They were Ottomon Empire mercenaries who worked for plunder rather than wages. They also knew how to rock a petticoat. Paintings by Jean-Léon Gérôme.
This young gent is a Bashi-Bazouk. They were Ottomon Empire mercenaries who worked for plunder rather than wages. They also knew how to rock a petticoat. Paintings by Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Gérôme is my FAVORITE Orientalist painter! Except I don’t think he’d approve of some of my uses of his art LOL
http://kirbycrow.tumblr.com/ (second pic)
Also, I owe you email.
Bfffft! I dunno, maybe he’d laugh?
I think I owe everybody email!
I’ve been trying for a day now to remember in which English children’s book I read was a nurse who admonished her charge to stop “tearing about like a Bashi-Bazouk”… the phrase has acquired new meaning! Clearly, she must have been envious of the young master’s headgear, and/or concerned by his predilection for petticoats.
I can imagine Richmal Crompton’s William being thus admonished, learning what a Bashi-Bazouk was, and commandeering headgear and petticoats to more fully play the part.