..Liotard's time spent in the Ottoman Empire - from 1738 to 1743 - had a profound effect on his work and on his personal appearance. Much of his subsequent work, both genre scenes and portraits, feature European subjects dressed in Turkish attire, and his own very eccentric adoption of Oriental dress and a long beard earned him the nickname le peintre turc - the Turkish painter - as the inscription in another self portrait commemorates. (In 1757, at the age of 54, he made a late marriage; his new wife did not appreciate his lavish beard, and he shaved.) (http://godsandfoolishgrandeur.blogspot.nl/2014/)