The young Decamps was greatly inspired by a trip he took to North Africa and the Near East in 1828. His resulting paintings helped instill a French taste for exotic Oriental themes, which he supplied to collectors eager for his work. Over the course of his lifetime, Decamps was honored with many prestigious awards, including the Grand Medal of Honor, presented to him at the time of his 1855 retrospective at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

The Night Patrol at Smyrna depicts Turkish military patrols making their rounds. It is a variant after a slightly larger painting now in the Wallace Collection, London, and was probably made at the end of the artist's life, when he is known to have reworked earlier compositions. The picture belonged to the Metropolitan Museum's first president, John Taylor Johnston, until 1876, when it was purchased by Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, the Museum's first female benefactor.

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