This paper offers a new angle in attempting to bridge Ottoman Armenian literary, social and visual art histories. It presents Simon Hagopian’s (1857-1921) painting Hamals on the Bridge at Karakoy (undated, early 1890s), as a rare visual equivalent of the abundant Realist literary output of the period. Realism had become the dominant cultural philosophy among a mostly Constantinople-based Ottoman Armenian literary elite from the 1880s onwards. Promoted by newspapers such as Arevelk, Masis and Hayrenik, the primary preoccupation of much literary production was to expose the wretchedness and poverty, and to call for the emancipation and improvement of the lot of those on the lower social echelons of society. Promoting education and social reform both within and outside the Ottoman Armenian millet at a time of great, and progressively intensifying, state censorship, much of these writers’ attention was focused on the living conditions of migrant workers from rural Ottoman Armenia. Of these, Hrant (Melkon Gurdjian (1859-1915), is unparalleled in having devoted almost his entire literary output to depict and portray, in great detail and with much sympathy, the lives of these migrants. Most visible among them were men (bekiars) from the plain of Moush and Van province, who worked as porters (hamals) and lived in slum-like conditions in inns (hans) in the imperial capital. Such preoccupations seem absent from the surviving visual arts record of native Ottoman artists. Western-style painting in particular, dominated by considerable conservatism, and heavily Orientalist in accent, appears to have catered entirely to the tastes of foreign visitors and a newly wealthy Ottoman elite. The existence, therefore, of work with powerful Realist underpinnings such as Hagopian’s forgotten Hamals calls for a re-evaluation of late 19th century Ottoman painting. Since its reproduction as a grainy image in the 1912 edition of Theotig’s Almanac the painting has vanished from public view. Based on an exhaustive physical analytical examination of the painting itself (located in a private collection following an eighteen-month search), and building upon archival research of late 19th century Constantinople Armenian-language media, this paper examines the relationship between artist and society and establishes links between image and text, the visual and the written record. By utilizing the painting as a crucial primary source document that exposes insights into the lives of the significant migrant segment of the city’s Armenian population, the paper adds a subaltern voice from the street to Ottoman Armenian art history.