Great tour of Ottoman and Turkish painting
Turks & Ottomans
One hundred oils to follow the metamorphosis of an empire into a modern nation: from court painting to the workshops of Istanbul, from the impressionist Bosphorus to the founding images of the Republic.
At the end of the 18th century, easel painting entered Ottoman workshops for a long time. The portraits of Kapïdaglï, the diplomatic scenes of Van Mour and the artists trained in military schools open a language where courtyard, street and landscape can now share the same canvas.
The 19th century considerably expanded this world. Osman Hamdi Bey founded the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, {eker Ahmed Pasa made the undergrowth and still life major subjects, while Turkish, Armenian, Italian, Polish and painters greeks give Istanbul a visual history as cosmopolitan as its quays.
Around 1914, the light of the Bosphorus met the experiences of Paris, Munich and Berlin. Then the wars and the Republic shift the gaze towards work, trauma, the cities of Anatolia and a new national memory. These one hundred paintings tell of this eventful continuity, where the Empire does not disappear from the frame: it changes light.
Icons of an Empire in Transition
Osman Hamdi Bey opens the route because he brings together archaeology, painting and reflection on the gaze. His figures are not picturesque types: they inhabit skillfully constructed spaces where books, earthenware, carpets and architectures tell the story of an Ottoman world that questions its own image.
Osman Hamdi Bey
The Turtle Trainer
Painted in 1906, The Turtle Trainer shows an elderly man leaning over a few turtles in a dilapidated room at the Bursa Green Mosque. Osman Hamdi Bey would have lent himself to the character, armed with a flute and patience obviously put to the test. The image is often read as a satire of Ottoman reforms: slowly instructing a recalcitrant empire here resembles training turtles. Behind the irony, the painter describes with precision from archaeologist the earthenware, inscription and light of the monument.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
The Armsman
The Arms Merchant belongs to the last great compositions of Osman Hamdi Bey. In an interior loaded with earthenware and ancient objects, two men examine weapons whose presence refers as much to prestige as to memory ottoman military. The painter avoids the bazaar display expected by the European orientalist public: the objects are looked at, weighed, almost studied. This attention corresponds to the double journey of Hamdi, an artist trained in Paris and founder of the Imperial Museum of Istanbul, for whom painting the past also meant organizing its preservation.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Old man in front of children's tombs
An old man pays his respects in front of small tombs topped with steles, in a cemetery that the light makes almost silent. Osman Hamdi Bey painted this scene in 1903, at a time when the death of several relatives darkened his universe. Children's tombs give the subject an unusual gravity, without theatrical gestures or easy consolation. The inscriptions, stones and vegetation are described carefully, but nothing distracts from the visitor's curved back. Ottoman history here ceases to be a scholarly setting: it becomes an intimate experience of loss.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Two musicians
Two young women sit in an Ottoman interior, each holding an instrument. Created in 1880, the painting belongs to Osman Hamdi Bey's early research into the figure and everyday arts. Clothes, tambourine and the earthenware decor is not accumulated for their strangeness alone: they build a space where the musicians fully occupy the stage. Contrary to many harems fantasized by Western painters, Hamdi gives these women have their own activity, concentration and presence. The music seems to begin as soon as the viewer finally agrees to be silent.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Young girl reciting the Quran
This reader painted in 1880 is absorbed by the text she holds in her hands. Osman Hamdi Bey takes up a frequent theme of his career, that of knowledge transmitted in an ancient interior, but here he entrusts reading to a young person woman. The choice is significant in the Ottoman Empire of the end of the 19th century, where women's education became an issue of reform. The painter associates the concentration of the model with the richness of fabrics and tiles without making any these are an autonomous spectacle. The real center of the painting remains the act of reading, discreetly revolutionary and much less noisy than a proclamation.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Young student emir
At the Walker Art Gallery, this young emir from 1905 studies in an interior in which each surface seems to carry a memory. Osman Hamdi Bey builds the scene around the open book, the folded posture and a meticulously structured architecture observed. The costume situates the character, but his attention individualizes him: he is neither an exotic figure nor a vague symbol of the Orient. The work summarizes the painter's project, which combines the academic technique acquired in Paris with a direct knowledge of Ottoman monuments and customs. Study thus becomes the real subject, with no final exam or supervisor on the horizon.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Quranic Instruction
In The Koranic Instruction, several figures come together around reading in a religious space. Osman Hamdi Bey paints less of a spectacular ceremony than a chain of transmission: the bodies are arranged according to listening, the books and looks. Ancient architecture, rendered with almost museum accuracy, recalls his work in defending Ottoman heritage. Yet the scene is never frozen like an exhibition hall. She shows how a text circulates between generations and how a place takes on meaning through use. The silence seems studious, but certainly not empty.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Carpet dealer on a street in Istanbul
The carpet merchant from 1888 occupies a narrow street where textiles, stones and silhouettes organize a very calculated depth. Osman Hamdi Bey knew perfectly well the European taste for oriental bazaars, but he complicates it here reading. The seller is not a picturesque accessory: his work, negotiation gestures and urban density structure the scene. The rugs catch the eye with their patterns, then the eye returns to the people who wear them manipulate. Istanbul appears as a city of commerce and know-how, not as a reserve of souvenirs for busy travelers.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
Theologian in the Koran
The Theologian in the Koran, dated 1902, presents a man immersed in study rather than a religious type reduced to his costume. The precision of the earthenware, the desk and the manuscript testifies to the knowledge that Osman Hamdi Bey possessed of collections and monuments. Director of the Imperial Museum, he had made the protection of antiquities a public mission; in his painting, the objects regain their intellectual and spiritual function. The collected pose slows down the look and forces us to consider the character as a reader. Even the richly decorated walls seem to be waiting for him to finish his page.
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Osman Hamdi Bey
The Fountain of Youth
In 1904, La Fontaine de jouvence transposed an ancient theme of regeneration into an Ottoman setting observed with great precision. Around the fountain, architecture, gestures and objects connect the legendary story to a credible place. Osman Hamdi Bey does not seek to illustrate a tale like a vignette: he creates an ambiguous scene where the promise of youth dialogues with the weight of time inscribed in the stones. The work belongs to its period of maturity, when its museologist activity directly nourishes his painting. The miracle remains uncertain, but the fountain has received an excellent pictorial conservation service.
See reproduction →The palace, the street and the Bosphorus
From the ceremonial of Selim III to the bustling quays of Galata, the painting records the hierarchies of the court as much as the rhythm of the metropolis. Van Mour, Kapïdaoglili, Zonaro, Chlebowski and the cosmopolitan painters of Istanbul show a empire crossed by embassies, transport, trades and modernization.
Konstantin Kapidagli
The Enthronement of Selim III
The enthronement of Selim III sets the ceremonial of 1789 when a new sultan comes to power. Konstantin Kapïdaogliti organizes dignitaries, guards and architecture according to an immediately readable hierarchy. The table responds to desire of the court to renew its image at the time of the first major military and diplomatic reforms of Selim III. The perspective and modeling coming from European painting still mingle with an Ottoman logic of representation of ranks. The ceremony therefore celebrates a sovereign, but it also announces an empire which is cautiously experimenting with new ways of showing itself.
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Konstantin Kapidagli
The Procession of Pyotr Potocki
Pyotr Potocki was ambassador of the Republic of the Two Nations to the Ottoman Porte. Konstantin Kapïdaoglï painted his procession around 1790 as a diplomatic deployment: horses, servants, clothing and the rhythm of the procession reflect the status of the visitor even before a word is exchanged. The scene documents the codes of representation between Istanbul and Warsaw at the end of the 18th century, a period of particularly tense political relations in Europe oriental. The painter transforms the street into a state theater, with enough movement to remind us that diplomacy then traveled with a lot of baggage.
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Konstantin Kapidagli
Sultan Mustafa IV
Mustafa IV only reigned for a little over a year, from 1807 to 1808, in a period of coups and reactions against the reforms of Selim III. The portrait of Kapïdaglï nevertheless presents him according to the expected sovereign immobility: costume, turban and pose build an authority that history will make very brief. The artist adapts the effects of volume and individualization of European painting to the Ottoman framework without abandoning the dynastic function of the image. THE contrast between the painted majesty and the political fragility of the reign gives the painting today a tension that its sponsors had undoubtedly not commanded.
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Jean-Baptiste van Mour
The Grand Vizier crossing the Atmeydani
Installed in Istanbul in the entourage of the French embassy, Jean-Baptiste van Mour observed the Ottoman court for decades. In 1727, he followed the grand vizier crossing the Atmeydaniti, the former Hippodrome, with his escort. THE differences in hairstyles, frames and ranks make the hierarchy visible as a regulated procession. Van Mour worked for a European audience eager for information about the Gate, but his long years there gave the scene a rare precision. This is not a workshop fantasy: it is the circulation of power in a city where even crossing a square could become an affair of state.
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Jean-Baptiste van Mour
The Children of the French Ambassador presented at the Grand Vizier
In 1724, the children of the French ambassador were brought before the grand vizier. Van Mour records the meeting as an episode of lived diplomacy, where etiquette decides the position of each body. Young visitors bring an unusual note in an adult ritual, while clothes and gifts materialize the exchange between two classes. The painting belongs to a set of Ottoman scenes brought together by Ambassador Cornelis Calkoen and today kept at the Rijksmuseum. It shows that international history was not only played out in treaties: it also began by learning where to stand.
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Jean-Baptiste van Mour
Reception of envoys from France by the Grand Vizier
The reception of the French envoys by the grand vizier illustrates one of Van Mour's great subjects: diplomacy as a regulated spectacle. Produced around the end of the 17th century, the stage distributes participants on either side of one axis which makes the authority of the vizier incontestable. The ambassadors do not enter into an imaginary setting, but into a protocol where each seat, gesture and garment has meaning. The work allows us to understand how Europeans present in Istanbul observed the Gate, between curiosity, negotiation and the need to bring back a readable image to their sponsors.
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Jean-Baptiste van Mour
Turkish wedding
Turkish wedding belongs to the scenes of manners that Van Mour painted for European collectors fascinated by the life of Istanbul. Around 1720, he described a collective ceremony where musicians, guests and clothing signaled the stages of the ritual. The image does not escape the external gaze of its author, but it benefits from prolonged observation, very different from reconstructions made after a brief trip. The crowd is organized without losing its animation, and the details allow roles to be identified rather than simple costumes. We understand that a wedding could involve as much protocol as joy, with probably less discretion.
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Jean-Baptiste van Mour
The Sultan in the harem
In The Sultan in the Harem, Van Mour addresses the space most fantasized by 18th century Europe. However, he does not paint an imaginary debauchery: the sovereign, the women and the servants are arranged according to a court scene carefully ordered. The work provides as much information on Western curiosity as on Ottoman reality, because the artist's access to this universe was necessarily indirect. This critical distance is essential: the painting is not a photograph of the harem, but a construction informed by Istanbul, the diplomatic stories and the expectations of its sponsors.
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Fausto Zonaro
The Ertugrul Cavalry Regiment crossing the Galata Bridge
The Ertugrul regiment crossed the Galata Bridge under the rapid brush of Fausto Zonaro, Italian painter turned court artist of Abdülhamid II. Around 1901, horsemen, pedestrians and modern architecture condensed the energy of a capital into transformation. The bridge connected the historic city to the districts of Galata and Pera; the passage of the troop combines military power and urban life. Zonaro had won the favor of the palace thanks to its great historical scenes, but here he retains the sense of movement learned in the street. Horses move forward with more confidence than many administrative reforms.
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Fausto Zonaro
The Daughter of the English Ambassador in a palanquin
This young woman, identified as the daughter of the British ambassador, crossed Istanbul by palanquin around 1900. Zonaro placed this means of transport in the center, then let the guides and the street clarify the social context. The painting intersects several worlds: European diplomacy, Ottoman customs and the view of an Italian painter based in the capital. The scene is not heroic, but it documents the privileged movements in a metropolis cosmopolitan. Its value lies precisely in this ordinary detail, which has become revealing of hierarchies, exchanges and a city where one could travel without touching the ground.
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Fausto Zonaro
Young girl carrying a pumpkin
A young girl walks carrying a large pumpkin, a modest subject that Zonaro treats with attention usually reserved for court scenes. Painted around 1900, the work belongs to his daily observation of Istanbul and its inhabitants. The weight of the fruit, the gait and the clothes give the character a concrete reality; nothing obliges him to play the role of a picturesque figure. This dignity of everyday life explains the place of the painting in the pera Museum Collection. The official painter therefore knew how to leave the imperial processions to look at a much more serious commission: to bring back dinner.
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Fausto Zonaro
Fishermen bringing back their catch
Fishermen bringing back their catch capture the moment when the collective effort is concentrated around nets and fish. Zonaro knew the quays of Istanbul, which he traveled and drew far from the palace ceremonies. He translates here the work by leaning bodies, coordinated gestures and lively pictorial material. The Bosphorus is no longer just the prestigious landscape of embassies: it becomes an economic environment on which the city depends. The composition gives a almost historical scale to a daily task, reminding us that before being a magnificent blue motif, the strait was above all a place where one earned one's living.
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Fausto Zonaro
Entertainment on the caique
In Entertainment on the Caique, a light boat becomes a floating lounge on the waters of Istanbul. Around 1900, Zonaro observed an urban leisure activity linked to the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, where walking, music and sociability mingled. THE passengers are brought together by the elongated shape of the boat, while the reflections widen the scene. The work retains the charm of an elegant outing without forgetting the work of the rower which makes it possible. This small society in balance on the water sums up a capital facing its banks, with the relative caution of people convinced that beautiful clothes can swim.
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Fausto Zonaro
Party in Goksu
Göksu, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, was one of the favorite places for walks in Ottoman society. Around 1900 Zonaro painted a festival there where boats, groups and vegetation make up a lively landscape. The scene bears witness to new forms urban leisure at the end of the Empire, when the banks became meeting spaces between old habits and metropolitan modernity. The artist does not choose a single hero: he makes the crowd and its movement the real subject. Istanbul is told here through a relaxing day, a historical activity often underestimated because it produces fewer archives than battles.
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Stanislaw Chlebowski
The Hookah Smoker
Painted in 1877, The Hookah Smoker shows how Stanisław Chlebowski transforms an isolated figure into a character study. The Polish artist had worked for several years in Istanbul for Sultan Abdülaziz, notably on military scenes. Here, no battle: time hangs around the pipe, the costume and an inward gaze. The precise realism of the fabrics testifies to his academic training, but the pose avoids the simple orientalist inventory. The smoke, invisible or almost, becomes the measure of a slow time that the spectator is invited to share.
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Stanislaw Chlebowski
At the city gate
At the city gate places some figures on the threshold of massive architecture. Chlebowski painted in 1873, during the period when his experience of Istanbul nourished compositions intended for the court as well as the European market. The door is not a simple framework: it marks the transition between military control, commercial circulation and daily life. The characters remain small facing the walls, which gives the place the weight of a story longer than them. THE tableau recalls that the Ottoman city was discovered by its access points, with fewer signposts but many more guards.
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Stanislaw Chlebowski
The Turkish Guard
The Turkish Guard of 1880 is painted after Chlebowski's stay with Abdülaziz, but retains direct memory of the uniforms and attitudes observed in Istanbul. The man neither charges nor parades; he stands still professional who reveals the weight of the equipment. The painter contrasts the precision of the costume with a discreet background, giving all its density to the face and posture. The work thus joins the tradition of military portraiture without invent a victory. It shows the one who probably waits, watches and endures long hours that history painters rarely talk about.
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Stanislaw Chlebowski
The Guardian of the Mosque
Around 1870, Chlebowski painted a guard placed at the entrance to a mosque. The sacred architecture, carpets and standing silhouette define a boundary between public space and interior. The artist, who knew Istanbul from the interior of the courtyard avoids the spectacular agitation of the bazaar scenes. He is interested in the concrete role of the guard and the dignity of an almost silent presence. The light leads towards the door without abolishing the restraint of the place. THE tableau therefore tells less of a monument than of a use: the building also exists thanks to the one who watches while visitors look elsewhere.
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Stanislaw Chlebowski
Prayer time
The Hour of Prayer transforms a daily moment into a scene of collective concentration. Chlebowski arranges the figures according to the gestures of the rite, without multiplying the dramatic effects. Painted before his death in 1884, the work belongs to a career shared between Krakow, Paris and several years in the service of Sultan Abdülaziz. This trajectory explains the meeting between European academic technique and observation of Ottoman practices. The table must nevertheless to be read as the gaze of a foreign artist, attentive but situated. Its strength comes from the rhythm of bodies, which makes a community visible without interrupting its contemplation.
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Leonardo de Mango
On the Golden Horn
Leonardo de Mango arrived in Istanbul in 1883 and remained there almost until his death. On the Golden Horn, painted the following year, therefore belongs to the first sight of an artist who would make the city his main subject. The boats, the banks and the light of the port do not form a still postcard: they describe an area of work, passage and social mixing. The Italian observes the capital from the water, where modern silhouettes and older monuments stand meet. The Golden Horn becomes less of a blue line than a liquid street, with traffic already incompatible with daydreaming.
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Leonardo de Mango
At the fountain
At the fountain, dated 1918, shows how Leonardo de Mango had learned to look at Istanbul over time. The public fountain brings together architecture, water and ordinary gestures in a composition without an official hero. At the moment the Empire goes through war and the occupation draws closer, the painter chooses a humble infrastructure which continues to regulate the life of the neighborhood. Containers and expectations tell a social story more discreet than events military. This persistence gives the picture its seriousness: diets change, but someone always has to fill a jug and wait behind the person who takes all their time.
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Migirdiç Civanyan
Sunset over the sea
Migirdiç Civanyan makes the sunset an urban as well as a natural event. Around 1900, the colorful vapor of the sky was reflected on a sea traveled by boats. Armenian artist from Istanbul, Civanyan belongs to one cosmopolitan tradition which shaped Ottoman painting while remaining for a long time diminished in national stories. Its navies record the arrival of vapors, the transformation of the banks and a clientele's taste for the Bosphorus. Here, the sun does not erase modernity: it illuminates a city where sail and motor intersect without asking for priority.
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Migirdiç Civanyan
The Yali of Saïd Pasha
Saïd Pasha's yali is one of Civanyan's most precise images of Bosphorus residential architecture. Around 1890, the wooden residence spread out at the water's edge, accessible both by boat and by the bank. The painter does not don't treat the house as just luxurious decor: it shows its relationship to the strait, reflections and traffic. These residences were vulnerable to fires and urban transformations, giving the painting value additional documentary. Painting maintains a way of living where the main entrance could very well arrive with oars.
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Migirdiç Civanyan
Leander's Tower
The Tower of Leander, located on its islet at the southern entrance to the Bosphorus, has attracted legends and painters for centuries. Civanyan represents it around 1890 in the middle of maritime traffic which prevents the monument from becoming an isolated relic. The Armenian artist from Istanbul knows the changes in light of the strait and uses the reflections to connect the building to the banks. The work also testifies to the growing role of landscape in late Ottoman painting. The tower remains tiny facing the sky, but it won the competition for the most stubbornly photogenic building even before the invention of telephones.
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Migirdiç Civanyan
Steam on the Bosphorus
In Steam on the Bosphorus, Civanyan places modern technology at the heart of a landscape associated with sailboats and palaces. Around 1900, the steamship moved smoke, passengers and goods between the shores of a metropolis expansion. The painter does not present this machine as an intrusion; it already belongs to the rhythm of the strait. Atmospheric effects soften the hull without erasing its power. The history of Ottoman modernization appears so in an ordinary transport scene, proof that progress sometimes happens without fanfare, but rarely without a good amount of smoke.
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Garabet Yazmaciyan
Storm at sea
Garabet Yazmaciyan paints the sea as a force that resists all human organization. In Storm at Sea, waves and sky dominate the boats, reduced to fragile signs. Armenian artist active in Istanbul, Yazmaciyan is best known for urban and maritime landscapes where the lighting effects become dramatic. The painting belongs to a visual culture of the Bosphorus that not only celebrates its elegant walks: it also remembers of its dangers. The waters that connect the neighborhoods can suddenly separate them, and the weather then takes care of reminding us who really controls the strait.
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Garabet Yazmaciyan
The Fener Lighthouse
The Fener Lighthouse marks one of the major points of the Golden Horn, in a district associated with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. Yazmaciyan isolates it at the water's edge and transforms its practical function into a light pattern. Around 1900, Istanbul still combines old landmarks, maritime traffic and new equipment; the lighthouse belongs precisely to this city in transition. The Armenian artist observes a topography shared by several communities, without reducing the landscape to a unique identity. The small architecture guides the boats in the picture as it guided the sailors, which is already a lot to ask for a few meters of masonry.
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Garabet Yazmaciyan
The Galata Fire
The fires were a constant threat to Istanbul's wooden-built neighborhoods. In The Galata Fire, Yazmaciyan transforms this urban reality into a clash of lights: flames cut up buildings and attract a tiny crowd facing disaster. The scene is not an abstract catastrophe; Galata was a dense, commercial and cosmopolitan neighborhood where a fire could destroy lives, workshops and archives in a matter of hours. The painting thus preserves the memory of a regularly rebuilt city. Its spectacular red is beautiful to look at, which remains one of the least comfortable contradictions of disaster painting.
See reproduction →The landscape becomes a school
At the end of the 19th century, the landscape ceased to be a simple background. {eker Ahmed Pasa, Halil Pasa, Hoca Ali Rirza and Nazmi Ziya Güran make the forest, the banks and the light a laboratory: reality is observed, recomposed, then released by touch and color.
{eker Ahmed Pasa
The forest
{eker Ahmed Pasa was among the first Ottoman painters to make landscape an autonomous subject. In La Forêt, around 1890, the close trunks almost close the horizon and force the eye to slowly penetrate into space. Trained in Paris after a military career, the artist brought back a Western technique which he adapted to a particular sensitivity to plant masses. The forest is neither a hunting setting nor a symbol added after the fact: it becomes the protagonist. The trees appear so present that they could ask the visitor to lower their voice, a privilege rarely granted to undergrowth.
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{eker Ahmed Pasa
Deer in the forest
Deer in the Forest takes a European motif from animal painting, but {eker Ahmed Pasa gives it a very personal spatial strangeness. The animal appears in the middle of dense undergrowth where trunks, rocks and light do not not always follow a docile academic perspective. This tension has fascinated art historians, who see in its landscapes much more than correctly applied Western learning. The deer becomes the fragile point from an immense plant universe. He does not pose for the painter: he seems to have been surprised just before disappearing, a perfectly reasonable reaction in the presence of a human equipped with an easel.
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{eker Ahmed Pasa
Flowers
In Flowers, {eker Ahmed Pasa applies the same dense attention to a bouquet as to his landscapes. The arrangement is not strictly decorative: the stems, shadows and differences in texture construct a small architecture natural. At the end of the 19th century, still life allowed Ottoman painters trained at the academy to assert their mastery of volume, color and light without depending on a historical narrative. The bouquet also bears witness to the development of an exhibition culture in Istanbul, to which {eker Ahmed contributed directly. These flowers no longer fade, an unfair advantage but very appreciated by museums.
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{eker Ahmed Pasa
Melon and fruit
The open melon and the fruits gathered on the table offer {eker Ahmed Pasa an exercise in substance: rough skin, damp flesh, smooth surfaces and deep shadows. Around 1900, still life became an essential terrain of the modern Ottoman painting, where observation replaces court narration. The artist, a former officer trained in Paris, here measures his technique against familiar objects rather than imported symbols. The cut melon introduces temporality immediate, because you have to look at it before it spoils. The painting thus gains a slight urgency, a rare event in a fruit basket.
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{eker Ahmed Pasa
Still life with fruits
This still life with fruits organizes abundance without transforming it into a catalog. {eker Ahmed Pasa brings the volumes together, contrasts the ripe colors with the dark background and uses light to circulate the gaze. The genre accompanies the institutionalization of easel painting in the Ottoman Empire, notably early exhibitions and modern artistic education. Behind the simplicity of the subject therefore lies a new ambition: to show that art can born from precise observation of everyday life. The fruits illustrate neither battle nor legend, but they still require a fairly rigorous compositional strategy.
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{eker Ahmed Pasa
Still life with quinces
Quinces, with their irregular shape and dark skin, are particularly suitable for the eyes of {eker Ahmed Pasa. Instead of smoothing out the defects, he uses bumps, shadows and differences in maturity to construct the presence of objects. This study belongs to the moment when Ottoman painters made still life a genre in its own right, nourished by academic training but linked to local products and interiors. The painting reveals a modernity without manifesto: paint what is there, with enough attention for the familiar to cease to be invisible. Quinces have never required so much consideration.
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{eker Ahmed Pasa
Self-portrait
In his Self-Portrait, {eker Ahmed Pasa presents himself as an artist and a man of his time, not as the simple officer that his title could leave waiting for. The face, the outfit and the direct gaze affirm an identity professional still new to the Ottoman Empire. Ahmed Ali had studied painting in Paris, organized one of the first art exhibitions in Istanbul in 1873 and participated in the lasting introduction of easel painting. The self-portrait records this position of smuggler. It not only shows what the painter looked like: it calmly states that an Ottoman painter now deserves his own image.
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Halil Pasa
The Çengelköy Embarcadere
The Çengelköy Pier shows the Asian side of the Bosphorus at a time when shipping is reconfiguring daily life in Istanbul. Halil Pasa paints buildings, boats and the water surface with moving light acquired in part during his Parisian training. The place is not a monumental view: it is a crossing point where residents and goods change banks. Preserved at the Pera Museum, the work reminds us that urban modernity has built as much by piers as by large buildings. The boat on time, however, remains information that the canvas keeps cautiously to itself.
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Halil Pasa
Hagia Sophia
Halil Pasa approaches Hagia Sophia as a historical mass inscribed in the city lived. Around 1900, the building was still an imperial mosque, already bearing traces of its long Byzantine and Ottoman history. Rather than detailing it the painter integrates each mosaic into the atmosphere, neighboring buildings and light of Istanbul. This choice brings the monument closer to the modern landscape: Hagia Sophia is no longer just the emblem of a reign, but a presence daily. Its silhouette dominates without crushing the stage, an architectural feat that many urban planners would probably have liked to reproduce.
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Halil Pasa
View of Istanbul
In View of Istanbul, Halil Pasa builds the city by planes of light rather than by inventory of monuments. Formed in Paris and associated with the beginnings of Turkish impressionism, he brings a freer touch which he adapts to the climate of Bosphorus. The architectural silhouettes serve as landmarks, but the atmosphere connects the whole. Around 1900, this way of painting accompanied a profound change: Istanbul became a modern subject observed from its streets and its rives, not only the capital represented by its ceremonies. The city stops posing and finally begins to breathe.
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Halil Pasa
The Young Painter in her studio
The Young Painter in her studio places at the center a woman busy creating, a remarkable subject in Ottoman society at the end of the 19th century. Halil Pasa presents her neither as a muse nor as a model: she holds the tools and organizes her own look. The workshop, paintings and light describe the emergence of a female artistic practice still limited by access to institutions. The work announces the careers of Müfide Kadri and Mihri Müsfik, who will make this possibility of a public reality. The title seems simple, but the role reversal is clear: here, it is she who looks and the world which must remain in place.
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Halil Pasa
Mrs
Madame its Ottoman context. The painter avoids overly talkative narrative accessories and focuses attention on the face, silhouette and quality of blacks. The title retains the anonymity of the woman, which recalls the limits of many artistic archives. Her identity escapes us, but the painting refuses to allow her to become an insignificant figure.
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Halil Pasa
The Muezzin Call
The Call of the Muezzin combines architecture and voice without attempting to literally paint sound. Halil Pasa places the figure high up, in a space where the city becomes the invisible audience. Around 1900, the subject linked a daily practice ancient with a modern pictorial style, attentive to the effects of air and light. The minaret is not treated as a picturesque accessory: it fulfills its function, punctuates the day and connects entire neighborhoods through listening. There canvas thus reminds us that an urban landscape is not only made up of what we see, a detail that the painting accepts here with elegance.
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Hoca Ali Riza
Leander's Tower
Hoca Ali Rirza tirelessly drew and painted the Asian side of Istanbul, particularly Üsküdar. Its Leander Tower is therefore not an occasional view intended for travelers, but a familiar motif observed under lights changing. Around 1900, the islet served as a fixed point while boats, water and sky organized the movement. A teacher in military schools, the artist passed on direct landscape practice to several generations. The tower becomes under his brush a stubborn neighbor: always in the same place, never quite identical, and rarely willing to miss a beautiful light.
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Hoca Ali Riza
The Tower of Leander at sunset
Dated 1894, La Tour de Léandre au couchant studies the moment when shapes lose their details but gain intensity. Hoca Ali Riza places the silhouette of the tower between the colors of the sky and their reflections on the Bosphorus. The subject famous is deliberately reduced, almost absorbed by the atmosphere. This economy distinguishes his approach from monumental panoramas: the painter seeks less to describe Istanbul than to remember a specific time. The work also shows how turkish watercolor and oil have made the landscape a sensitive laboratory, with the sun as a punctual and notoriously patient collaborator.
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Hoca Ali Riza
Leander's Tower from Üsküdar
From Üsküdar, Hoca Ali Riza looked at Leander's Tower in 1904 as an element of local life. The distance clearly places the islet in relation to the shore, boats and hills of Istanbul. Unlike fabricated views for a foreign audience, this painting was born from daily use of the site. The artist knew the changes in the neighborhood, the traffic times and the weather variations of the strait. The tower therefore has a geography, not just a legend. It serves as a stable measure for a landscape that, all around, changes with almost professional constancy.
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Hoca Ali Riza
Landscape
This Landscape from 1898 summarizes Hoca Ali Riza's method: starting from a real site, simplifying the shapes and letting the atmosphere unite the plans. The painter often worked on the pattern and encouraged his students to directly observe the nature rather than repeating workshop models. Houses, trees or relief do not seek spectacular effect; they describe an inhabited and close environment. This attention to the outskirts of Istanbul constitutes today a precious archive of transformed places. The painting does not cry out to be historical, which is perhaps its most effective way of becoming so.
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Nazmi Ziya Güran
The Nusretiye Mosque in Tophane
Nazmi Ziya Güran painted the Nusretiye Mosque in 1928, a 19th century building erected in Tophane near the Bosphorus. Associated with the generation of 1914, he fragmented the light into colored touches and made the facades vibrate instead of giving one cold survey. The monument commissioned by Mahmud II bears the memory of the Ottoman reforms, while the painting already belongs to the young Republic. This superposition of periods gives the painting its depth: a modern painter look at an imperial symbol in a city that changes regime without changing the sun.
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Nazmi Ziya Güran
Landscape
In this Landscape from 1934, Nazmi Ziya Güran continued until the end of his life a research begun after his stay in Paris. He had seen impressionism, but never made it an imported recipe: his touch adapts to the light more hard of Istanbul and to the rhythms of its gardens and its banks. Juxtaposed colors build space without freezing it. The work belongs to a Republic which wants to include painting in its modern institutions, but it remains first a sensitive experience of the place. The landscape changes before the eyes, without waiting for the theory to finish its sentence.
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Nazmi Ziya Güran
Ships in port
Ships in the port make maritime activity a play of masses, smoke and reflections. Around 1920, Nazmi Ziya Güran observed a port where steam and sail continued to coexist, a sign of uneven but visible modernization. The boats are not aligned like technical objects: they cut up the water and give its rhythm to the composition. The lively touch transforms the work of the port into a luminous event without erasing it. This alliance between industry and atmosphere characterizes a pictorial modernity that accepts fireplaces, as long as they contribute a little to the color of the sky.
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Nazmi Ziya Güran
Walk in Goksu
In the 1920s, Göksu remained a place for walks full of Ottoman memories. Nazmi Ziya Güran, however, paints it with a modern touch which dissolves the contours and favors moving light. Walkers participate in the landscape rather than posing in front of it, and the water connects the groups to the foliage. The work preserves the memory of a sociability of the banks at a time when the Republic is redefining public habits. Nothing resembles a brutal break: hobbies change clothes faster than fun, and a beautiful day continues to require very little explanation.
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Nazmi Ziya Güran
Woman in pink on a deck chair
The woman in pink lying on a deck chair allows Nazmi Ziya Güran to bring her search for light towards the figure. Around 1920, the pink of the garment became a chromatic focus that the surrounding tones modulated. The model is not not locked into an official portrait: its relaxed pose belongs to a private, modern and almost instantaneous space. The painting also testifies to the evolution of female representations in Turkish painting, far from harem types made for the West. Here, the woman rests without providing a narrative alibi, a pictorial privilege as simple as it is historically appreciable.
See reproduction →Workshops, faces and daily life
Modernity can also be read in interiors, portraits and leisure activities. Müfide Kadri, Mihri Müsfik, Abdülmecid II, {evket Dagog and Sarkis Diranian shift attention towards the individual, intellectual activity, the role of women and the transformation of private spaces.
Mufide Kadri
Women playing oud outdoors
Painted in 1910, this scene by Müfide Kadri brings together women playing oud in the open air. The artist was one of the first professional Ottoman painters and notably taught members of the imperial family, despite a lifetime interrupted at twenty-two. Music, the garden and clothing build an active feminine sociability, very different from the passive harems of the orientalist imagination. Each instrument involves learning and listening. The work so discreetly affirms several skills at once: painting, playing, coming together and occupying the landscape without waiting for a man to provide the subject.
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Mufide Kadri
Woman reading
In Woman Reading, Müfide Kadri chooses one of the most significant images of Ottoman modernity: a single woman with a book. Around 1910, women's education progressed but remained a major social issue. The reader is not surprise or staging for the viewer; her attention forms a calm barrier. Kadri, herself a painter and teacher, knew what access to knowledge represented in a still exceptional female career. The painting thus transforms a silent occupation into an affirmation of autonomy. The book does not serve as a scholarly accessory: it has clearly won over the entire conversation.
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Mufide Kadri
Landscape
This Landscape shows a lesser known side of Müfide Kadri, often associated with female figures. Around 1910, she organized trees, relief and light with a freedom which testifies to the expansion of the artistic training offered to women of the Ottoman elite. The site is not identified as an obligatory monument; this absence allows the painting to concentrate on the relationships of color and depth. The work reminds us that Kadri was looking for a career complete, and not a specialty deemed suitable. Her early death makes these experiences all the more valuable: each opens a direction that she has not had time to exhaust.
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Mufide Kadri
Still life
The Still Life of Müfide Kadri brings together familiar objects in an exercise in volume, texture and balance. Around 1910, this genre occupied an important place in academic learning, but it also offered women artists a territory less monitored than great history painting. Kadri goes beyond school study by giving objects their own relationship, regulated by shadows and colors. The simplicity of the subject makes his profession as a painter visible, while his short career was long recounted mainly as a biographical exception. Here, objects have the good idea of letting technique speak.
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Mufide Kadri
Couple on the promenade
Couple on the promenade belongs to the scenes where Müfide Kadri observes new ways of being together in Ottoman public space. Around 1910, the two figures advance in a landscape which is neither a harem garden nor a theatrical setting. The walk involves choice, mobility and shared gaze; it reflects a more discreet social modernity than the major political reforms. Kadri paints the relationship by the distance between bodies and the rhythm of walking, without transform the characters into sentimental illustrations. The couple moves, which at least saves them from the historically formidable ordeal of posing for hours.
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Mufide Kadri
Lovers on the beach
In Lovers on the Beach, Müfide Kadri places intimacy in front of an open space. The sea broadens the composition while the two figures form a distinct core, absorbed by his own conversation. Around 1910, this representation a couple outside of family or ceremonial settings bears witness to new subjects in Ottoman painting. Kadri seeks neither scandal nor moral lesson: she observes how a relationship modifies the perception of the place. The beach is no more only a landscape, but a distance offered to the characters. We don't know what they are saying to each other, which probably remains the best editorial decision of the painting.
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Mufide Kadri
View of Istanbul on the Bosphorus
This view of the Bosphorus allows Müfide Kadri to place his work in the great landscape tradition of Istanbul while retaining a personal voice. The banks and water do not serve as a background for an exotic story: they become a system of light, distances and circulation. Around 1910, the strait was already covered by rapid technical and social modernity. The painter retains machines less than visual experience. The complete work his reading and music scenes: his feminine universe is never limited to the interior, he also looks at the entire city from its banks.
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Mihri Müsefik
Portrait of Thomas Edison
Mihri Müsefik meets Thomas Edison in the United States and creates his portrait, generally dated from the 1920s. The meeting brings together a pioneer of Ottoman female artistic education and the inventor who became a world symbol of modern technology. Rather than surrounding it with machines, Mihri focuses attention on the face and authority of the model. The work bears witness to his international career, carried out between Istanbul, Rome and New York after having contributed to found the School of Fine Arts for girls. The portrait is therefore also that of an artist capable of entering modern networks without asking permission from the national narrative.
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Abdulmecid II
Goethe in the harem
Goethe in the harem was painted in 1918 by Abdülmecid II, the last Ottoman caliph and cultured artist. A woman reads Goethe in an imperial interior, surrounded by instruments and books. The title deliberately reverses the cliché of the idle harem: this place becomes a space for reading, music and exchanges with European culture. At the end of an empire exhausted by war, the canvas formulates a cosmopolitan ideal that political history will soon interrupt. His discreet humor to the absent visitor: Goethe is only present through his pages, but he clearly occupies an excellent place in the room.
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Abdulmecid II
Portrait of Hanzade Sultan
Abdülmecid II painted his granddaughter Hanzade Sultan in 1936, born after the abolition of the sultanate and raised in exile. The portrait therefore bears the memory of a dynasty which no longer exercises power. The artist does not reconstruct a ceremony imperial; he looks at a young woman belonging to a family now dispersed between several countries. The pose and the costume retain an official dignity, but the family relationship softens the image. The painting is a portrait dynastic an intimate archive from the post-Empire period, when titles remain in the names but the palaces have ceased to organize the day.
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Sarkis Diranian
Young woman bathing
Sarkis Diranian paints this young woman in the bath with a smooth technique acquired between Istanbul and Paris. Armenian artist born in the Ottoman Empire, he studied at the Paris School of Fine Arts and exhibited at the Salon. Around 1900, the subject of bathing belongs to a long European academic tradition which often transforms the female body into a spectacle. Diranian, however, favors modeling, light and an individualized presence rather than an overloaded oriental decor. The work thus testifies to a transnational career, difficult to lock up in a single school and much more interesting as soon as you stop trying.
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Sarkis Diranian
Lady sitting at tea time
Lady Sitting at Tea Time transposes a modern sociability ritual into an elegant portrait. Diranian constructs the figure through fabrics, pose and interior light, without requiring spectacular action from her. Tea locates one domestic break where Ottoman and European codes naturally intersect. For an Armenian artist trained in Paris, this mixture is not a contradiction but a lived environment. The painting retains the academic grace expected from the salons while documenting an ordinary moment of urban comfort. The cup, fortunately, did not need to stay warm throughout the session.
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Sarkis Diranian
In the hammam
In the hammam, dated 1898, addresses a subject very charged by European orientalism. Diranian knows these expectations, he who works between the Ottoman Empire and Paris, but he organizes the scene around bodies, steam and light rather than an inventory of fantasies. The hammam is at the same time a place of hygiene, sociability and ritual; the painting retains its closed atmosphere. We must nevertheless keep in mind the male academic framework in which the work was produced and watched. Its beauty does not cancel this story: rather it forces us to see both at the same time.
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{evket Daog
Interior of Rumeli Hisari
{evket Daog makes Rumeli Hisaroi, a fortress built by Mehmed II before the capture of Constantinople, an interior space crossed by light. Around 1910, he moved away from the panoramic views of the monument to study the walls, the passages and their aging. The painter is especially famous for his architectural interiors, where the material of the stone counts as much as the historical subject. The fortress ceases to be an abstract military symbol: it becomes one place that time has dug, inhabited by shadows more patient than armies.
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{evket Daog
Rest
The Rest shows the ability of {evket Dag to introduce a figure into architecture without reducing it to a setting. The seated character gives scale, but also duration: the place is traveled, used, momentarily inhabited. Around from 1910, Daog taught and participated in the generation which permanently installed modern painting in Ottoman and then republican institutions. Its interiors favor reflected light, carpets, walls and volumes silent. Here, rest becomes a way of measuring space, which provides excellent historical justification for any prolonged pause.
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{evket Daog
Interior of Hagia Sophia
In the interior of Hagia Sophia, {evket Dag paints less the famous dome than the experience of being under it. The pillars, carpets, lamps and tiny figures reflect the monumental scale of the ancient basilica that has become mosque. Around 1910, the building concentrates several centuries of history, but Dagog avoids archaeological demonstration: light connects the surfaces and present uses. His painting thus preserves the memory of a living religious space before its transformation into a museum in 1935. The architecture seems immobile, but each department reminds us that it changes its appearance all day long.
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{evket Daog
Mosque interior
{evket Dag has devoted much of his career to the interiors of Istanbul mosques. In this 1920s canvas, vaults, carpets and light construct a perspective that is both precise and enveloping. The faithful or visitors do not dominate the scene; they give the monument its human scale and its function. Painting these places at the time of the transition from the Empire to the Republic also amounts to preserving a visual memory threatened by the urban transformations. However, Dagog does not mummify anything: its interior breathes, welcomes and proves that a silent room can contain a lot of history without displaying it in capital letters.
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Suleyman Seyyid
Still life with oranges
Süleyman Seyyid painted oranges in 1904, the color of which exploded against a more restrained background. A former student of the Military School then trained in Paris, he was one of the great architects of Ottoman still life. His observation refuses the too perfect arrangement: weight, skin, leaves and shadows give the fruits an almost tactile presence. The genre, long considered minor, allows him to freely experience color and light while forming new painters. These oranges do not tell of an imperial victory, but they have survived far more regime changes than most ministers.
See reproduction →Wars, Republic and modernities
The Balkan Wars, the First World War and the birth of the Republic modified subjects and forms. Namisk ürsmail, Sami Yetik, Avni Lifij, Mehmet Ruhi Arel and Hale Asaf move from historical testimony to painting more synthetic, constructed by matter, flatness and psychological intensity.
Hueseyin Avni Lifij
The Black Day
Black Day responds to violence committed against Turkish civilians during the Greco-Turkish War. Painted in 1923, Hüseyin Avni Lifij's painting shows a dead woman near a destroyed house, under a sky that refuses any consolation. The artist celebrates neither heroic charge nor uniform: he places victims and ruins at the center of national memory. Produced in the year of the founding of the Republic, the work transforms recent trauma into a lasting image. His strength comes from this funeral restraint; no flag is needed to understand what the war left behind.
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Hueseyin Avni Lifij
Portrait of Harika Lifij
Harika Lifij was the wife and one of the closest models of Hüseyin Avni Lifij. In this intimate portrait, taken around 1910, the painter favors the face, the softness of light and a psychological presence far from his great allegories. Lifij, trained in Paris, had assimilated symbolism and academic painting, but here he adapts them to a personal relationship. The painting allows us to see what historical works often hide: behind them manifestos of a generation are workshops, couples and silent sessions. Harika does not represent an idea; it exists before her.
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Namisk Üsmail
Moonlight Mosque
Moonlight Mosque shows Namisk izmail in a nocturnal register where architecture becomes almost an apparition. Painted in 1925, two years after the birth of the Republic, the canvas retains the silhouette of a religious landscape ottoman in modern pictorial language. The dark masses are balanced by the moon and its reflections, which simplify the monument without erasing it. The artist, a former war painter trained in France and Germany, knows how to give to the night material density. The city seems calm, but the moon is clearly working in a night shift.
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Namisk Üsmail
Yali in the moonlight
In Moonlight Yali, dated 1922, Namisk îsmail looks at the residences of the Bosphorus on the eve of the official disappearance of the Ottoman Empire. The wooden facades and water are brought together by a cold light which transforms a pattern familiar in almost fragile memories. The painting does not proclaim the end of a world, but its date makes this reading difficult to avoid. The yali, threatened by fires and redevelopments, become the silent actors of one political transition. Their reflection seems more stable than their future, which is an excellent unintended definition of the year 1922.
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Namisk Üsmail
When the homeland commands
When the Fatherland Commands, painted in 1933, belongs to the great patriotic images of Namisk izmail. The work translates the collective appeal through oriented bodies, gestures and a composition designed to be understood immediately. Ten years after the founding of the Republic, this painting participated in the construction of a national memory where mobilization and sacrifice were presented as common values. Its monumental language comes from the artist's experience as war painter. It must be regarded both as a work and as a political image: its visual effectiveness is precisely what makes this double reading necessary.
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Namisk Üsmail
Typhus
Typhus was made in 1917, when Namisk îsmail served as a war painter during the First World War. Rather than a battle, he chooses the disease that strikes soldiers and populations far from heroic images. The bodies exhausted, the closed space and the muffled palette make visible a war waged against an enemy without uniform. The work belongs to an official mission, but its subject resists glorification: it documents vulnerability and insufficient care. In the history of Ottoman military painting, this room is worth as much as a battlefield, and probably more to understand the true cost of conflict.
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Namisk Üsmail
Men on deck
Men on Deck observes a group gathered on the deck of a ship, a motif linked to post-war travel and maritime experience. Namouk îsmail organizes the silhouettes against the opening of the sky and sea, giving the bridge a stage function. Around 1920, these men can be read as workers, travelers or demobilized soldiers; uncertainty is part of the work. The painter prefers the collective attitude to the individual portrait, as if he were looking for one transitional image. Everyone looks elsewhere, very human behavior as soon as a group is supposed to contemplate the same horizon.
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Namisk Üsmail
The threshing
The Battage takes Namisk izmail's painting to agricultural work. The bodies, animals and circular movement of the task organize a scene where collective effort constructs the composition. In the 1920s, the young République strongly values the peasant world as a national foundation, and this type of subject acquires a new political significance. However, the artist does not renounce pictorial material: dust, light and gestures prevent the image from become a poster. Turkish modernity is told here far from the boulevards of Istanbul, to the rhythm of work that had nothing abstract about it.
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Namisk Üsmail
Venetian bridge
Venetian bridge recalls the European formation and travels of Namisk izmail. Instead of an Ottoman monument or a national scene, he painted foreign architecture crossed by water and light. This openness is essential to understand the generation of 1914, whose artists studied in Paris, Berlin or Munich before redefining Turkish painting. The bridge becomes an exercise in spatial construction as much as a travel memory. It shows that modern artistic identity was not created behind a closed border, but through back and forth, comparisons and some probably endless rail connections.
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Sami Yetik
Kadifekale
Kadifekale dominates Izmir from a height associated with ancient Smyrna. Sami Yetik painted the site around 1915, when the Empire was engaged in war and the artist himself knew the front. The fortress is not just one ancient vestige: it connects a contemporary city to several layers of conquests and defenses. Yetik simplifies the masses to give the relief almost military authority. Painting precedes destruction and upheaval which Izmir will experience after 1919, which today transforms this view into a document before the disaster.
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Sami Yetik
Ankara Fortress
Ankara Fortress dominates a city of which the young Republic has just made its capital. Sami Yetik paints the mass of the citadel and the inhabited slopes as a relief shaped by several centuries of defense and daily life. An officer as much as a painter, he knew the real function of military walls, which distinguishes his view from a simple reverie on the ruins. The fortress seems solid, but the houses and paths remind us that it belongs now in a city in full transformation. The old defense post thus becomes one of the visual landmarks of the new state.
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Sami Yetik
The Feast of Sacrifice (Kurban Bayrami)
Painted in 1936, The Feast of Sacrifice shows women gathered around sheep on the occasion of Kurban Bayrami. Sami Yetik here moves away from the military charges that have made his reputation for observing a religious rite in his domestic and collective dimension. Animals occupy the foreground, while the gestures of women give the stage its concrete organization, far from an official ceremony. The work documents the persistence of practices ottomans in Republican Turkey. The festival is not represented by a spectacular procession, but by the discreet work that prepares it.
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Sami Yetik
The market
In The Market, Sami Yetik observes the movement of people and goods as a daily story. The stalls, silhouettes and breaks from negotiation give the composition several foci rather than a central hero. Painted around 1920, the scene belongs to a period of political upheaval where ordinary activities continue despite everything. Yetik, known as a war officer and painter, shows here another form of collective organization: sell, buy, compare, wait. The market becomes a small temporary town, governed by the price of products and by this universal rule that someone always blocks the way.
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Sami Yetik
The Cavalry
The Cavalry concentrates Sami Yetik's direct experience as an officer and painter of the Ottoman wars. Around 1915, horses and soldiers were launched into a diagonal which favored momentum rather than portraiture. The work participates in heroic language of military painting, but the weight of the mounts and the density of the group prevent the movement from becoming pure abstraction. Yetik had been captured during the Balkan War, which gives his scenes proximity with the conflict rarely shared by salon painters. The charge impresses; the artist's personal history, however, requires us not to confuse visual energy and costless war.
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Hale Asaf
Self-portrait
Hale Asaf's Self-Portrait, produced in the 1920s, affirms an artist with a direct eye and deliberately modern construction. Trained in Istanbul, Berlin, Munich and Paris, she simplifies volumes and refuses academic finishing who still dominated part of the official portrait. Her short and mobile life accompanies the first generation of Turkish women fully engaged in the European avant-gardes. The image requires neither indulgence nor exceptional status: it presents a painter who knows her place in the frame. This frontal look alone corrects several decades of art history written too comfortably in the masculine.
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Hale Asaf
Bursa
Bursa, painted around 1925, translates the city in compact volumes and color ratios rather than a tourist description. Hale Asaf knew Bursa through his family and taught there for a time; the subject therefore has one lived dimension. The houses, relief and streets are simplified according to the Cubist and post-Impressionist research encountered during its European formation. The work places a historic Ottoman city in the syntax of the republican modernity. Bursa keeps her monuments, but she stops posing for the postcard and agrees to become a much more interesting painting problem.
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Hale Asaf
Portrait of the artist's father
The Portrait of the Artist's Father gives Hale Asaf a family subject that she treats without excessive sentimentality. Around 1925, the plans of the face and clothing were simplified, the colors brought together and the presence constructed by the mass rather than photographic detail. The personal relationship allows sustained observation, but the painting remains demanding formal research. It shows how the artists of the young Republic adapted the lessons europeans to their own entourage. The father is neither notable official nor national allegory: he is watched by his daughter, a reversal of authority as discreet as it is decisive.
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Hale Asaf
Reading by the fire
Reading by the Fire belongs to the Parisian period of Hale Asaf, circa 1930. A figure concentrated on his book is brought together inside by the heat, the flat colored areas and the geometry of the furniture. The intimate subject contrasts with the difficult life of the artist, marked by illness, travel and fragile recognition. Asaf nevertheless transforms the piece into a pictorial refuge, without melodramatic anecdote. Reading slows down the scene while the fire organizes the colors. This small interior sums up daily modernity: thinking, reading and keeping warm, an artistic program that is much more durable than many manifestos.
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Mehmet Ruhi Arel
Ataturk Home
Home of Atatürk, dated 1927, depicts the reception of the founder of the Republic by a crowd organized around his arrival. Mehmet Ruhi Arel thus participates in the construction of a still recent national iconography. THE welcoming gestures, clothing and public space reflect the idea of a meeting between leader and population. The work must be read as a painting of contemporary history, with its share of political celebration and its interest documentary. It shows how the Republic creates its own ceremonies after having rejected those of the palace, proof that no regime renounces beautiful processions for very long.
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Mehmet Ruhi Arel
Still life
The Still Life of Mehmet Ruhi Arel brings the gaze back to the workshop after the major national scenes. Around 1925, objects, fruits or containers were arranged to study volumes, colors and material relationships. Arel was formed at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts then in Europe; this genre allows him to directly measure this academic heritage. The painting reminds us that the painters of the Republic did not only produce political emblems. They continued to solve older and often more difficult problems: how to fit multiple objects on a table without the composition collapsing.
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Mehmet Ruhi Arel
The Harvest
The Harvest is part of the growing interest of republican painting in the rural world. Around 1925, Mehmet Ruhi Arel represented bodies at work, tools and the collective rhythm of a fundamental activity for the economy country. The subject corresponds to the discourse which makes the peasant the heart of the nation, but the painting retains concrete attention to gestures and fatigue. Arel does not paint an empty countryside intended for urban rest: he shows what it is product. The light can be beautiful, but it falls on people who started their day long before the viewer.
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Mehmet Ruhi Arel
Peasants
In Peasants, Mehmet Ruhi Arel gives a collective presence to those whom official Ottoman art had rarely placed at the forefront. Around 1925, the young Republic sought an image of continuity, work and in the rural world national identity. The figures are brought together without being transformed into decorative types; clothing, attitudes and environment maintain their social reality. The painting participates in a political construction, but it also opens painting has lives long held outside the frame. Ending this journey with them usefully puts palaces, processions and great men in their rightful place in the landscape.
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