Decamps was one of the leading artists of Orientalist scenes, although he only visited the Middle East once, in 1828. Although his ambitions to be a history painter on a grand scale were never realised, many contemporary critics ranked him with Ingres and Delacroix among the foremost painters of his time. This painting, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1831, was Decamps’s first important painting with an Oriental subject. Nine men of a foot patrol are shown accompanying Cadji-Bey, the chief of police, on his round at the port of Smyrna (now Izmir). There is an element of caricature in Decamps’s treatment of some of the figures, particularly the pompous Cadji-Bey.