Preparing Coffee, from 1881, resurfaced after more than a
century in private European collections, known until recently only from a
black-and-white photograph taken in the same year by renowned photographers
Jean Pascal Sebah and Policarpe Joaillier.[2]
Sébah & Jouaillier photograph, Preparing Coffee, 1881
The sale made it the highest-valued lot in an auction that
saw 50 artworks sold in rapid succession. It was acquired by an anonymous buyer
through a phone bid on Tuesday.
Prince Sadiq Yadigarov, Tiflis province, Georgia (by circa
1910; Muslim by faith, Yadigarov was a landowner in the Borchali district of
Tiflis, head of the province’s cavalry division, and an avid art collector);
thence by descent to his son, Archil
Private collector, Vienna, by circa 1930 (acquired from the
above to whom related through marriage); thence by descent until 2008
Private collection, Austria (acquired from the above)
Literature
Mustafa Cezar, Sanatta Batı'ya Açılış ve Osman Hamdi,
Istanbul, 1995, vol I , p. 368, the 1881 Sébah & Jouaillier photograph
reproduced
Edhem Eldem, Osman Hamdi Bey Sözlüğü, Istanbul, 2010, p.
265, the 1881 Sébah & Jouaillier photograph reproduced
Orientalist art
Since then, it has been held in another Austrian private
collection until its recent emergence. Set within a richly tiled, colonnaded
interior — perhaps an imagined harem complex in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace — it
depicts two young women preparing a ritual coffee.
The setting is fictional but constructed with exquisite
attention to detail, a “sumptuous and jewel-like impression of luxe,” as
Sotheby’s catalogue describes it.
Born into an elite Ottoman family, Hamdi Bey was sent to
Paris in the early 1860s to study law but instead found his calling in painting
and archaeology.
By adopting Western artistic technique to depict Eastern
subjects, Hamdi Bey not only responded to the growing 19th-century market for
Orientalist art but also used his deep understanding of Muslim culture to
create nuanced, respectful portrayals of Ottoman life.
[1] Since Samuel Baker founded Sotheby's in London in 1744,
the company has occupied only two primary locations—the Strand, where we were
housed until 1917 and 34-35 New Bond Street, where we have been ever since.
Located in the he art of London's Mayfair district, Sotheby's
auctions offer an extraordinary diversity of objects and works of art from
Impressionist & Modern Art and Contemporary Art to Old Master Paintings,
19th Century European Art and Islmic Art, as well as Decorative Art from
Porcelain and Silver to French & English Furniture amongst many others.
[2] In a richly tiled, colonnaded interior, two young women
take turns washing their hands as they prepare to serve coffee in what may be
the imagined interior of the harem complex in Topkapı. The carved Kufic
inscription on the stone lintel above them is an invocation to God and reads
bismillah wa ma tawfi illa b'illah (Koran, chapter XI (Hud), part of verse 88),
suggesting that the setting is the vestibule to a mosque, within the palace
complex. The painting belongs to, and relates to, the series of paintings
dating to a period of intense productivity from 1878-1881: the standing woman
appears to be the same model wearing the same silk dress as in Young Woman
Reading of 1880 (Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia; fig. 1), while the frieze of
Kufic can be found in Young Emir Studying of 1878 (Louvre Abu Dhabi; fig. 2).
In common with these other works, rather than depicting an actual place, the
composition is an artful arrangement of its minutely observed constituent
elements, to create a sumptuous and jewel-like impression of luxe.
On the stone ledge on the left, on a velvet and metal-thread tablecloth, the coffee pot and zarfs await, beside a Mamluk brass bowl. Beneath them a decorated vase in the Chinese style stands on the floor. Above, hanging to dry, are two embroidered tea towels, and on a shelf on the wall is a Chinese blue and white bottle vase. Suspended from the ceiling is an ornamental ostrich egg pendant, associated with Ottoman royalty. The deep turquoise of the Mamluk wall tiles is picked up by the Caucasian runner upon which the women stand and kneel, leading the eye towards two massive ivory-inlaid Mamluk doors beyond, from underneath which a pencil-thin line of sunlight emerges from the adjoining room.
Sent to Paris to study the law, in the early 1860s Hamdy
broke off his legal training to pursue archaeology and painting. The latter
discipline he took up in the atelier of Gustave Boulanger and subsequently at
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where Jean-Léon Gérôme, another major influence, was
appointed Professor of painting in 1864. By adopting the western style of
painting to depict Orientalist scenes, Hamdy was following the burgeoning vogue
(and market) for Orientalist art, and able to use his background and
understanding of Muslim culture to his advantage. In Edhem Eldem’s words, his
Orientalist works offered ‘the public the impression – not to say the illusion
– of a reality he would have been more familiar with due to his origins and
identity.’ (Edhem Eldem, ‘How Does One Become an Oriental Orientalist? The Life
and Mind of Osman Hamdi Bey, 1842-1910’, Orientality: Cultural Orientalism and
Mentality, Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015, p. 44).
On his return to Turkey from France, Hamdy Bey worked in the
diplomatic service but continued to paint and to pursue his archaeological
interests. In 1881 he was appointed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II director of the
Imperial Ottoman Museum in the Topkapı Palace. To aid his acquisitions
programme he played a critical role in the introduction of a law prohibiting
the looting, theft, and smuggling of artefacts, which established an early
legal framework for the preservation of antiquities; while all the while directing
digs in Syria and Anatolia. His single most important discovery was the
Alexander Sarcophagus in Sidon in Lebanon, then part of the Ottoman Empire.
Keen to provide aspiring Turkish artists with a formal artistic training, in
1882 Hamdy Bey founded and became the first director of Istanbul’s Academy of
Fine Arts. Foreign recognition for his achievements included membership of the
Royal Academy of Arts in London, honorary membership of the University of
Pennsylvania, being awarded the Légion d’honneur; and an honorary doctorate
from Oxford University.
Until its recent rediscovery, this painting was known only
from the photograph taken in 1881 by photographers Sébah & Joaillier (the
glass negative of which is held by the Istanbul German Archaeological Institute
Archive, INV no. 8065 (fig. 3)).