Despite the accomplished artistry evident in his work, Charles Robertson’s achievement as a painter is little known today.

English-born, he lived for some years at Aix-en-Provence in France and travelled to Algeria (a mainly French artistic territory) in 1862. The following year he made his debut at the Royal Academy.

Subsequent travels to Turkey in 1872, Egypt and Morocco in 1876, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Damascus and Cairo in 1889, provided Robertson with abundant material for the orientalist tableaux – both genre scenes and imaginary subjects – he would produce for the remainder of his career.

By the time Robertson produced Bazaar Gossip in the mid 1880s – in emulation of the artist John Frederick Lewis, who...