PAINTING ART in OTTOMAN

 

The foremost representatives of Ottoman painting are Osman Hamdi Bey, Şeker Ahmet Paşa, Süleyman Seyyit, Halil Paşa, Hüseyin Zekal Paşa, Hoca Ali Riza and Ahmet Ziya Akbulut. Apart from Osman Hamdi Bey, all these artists had trained at military schools, where they obtained their first knowledge of perspective painting. Osman Hamdi Bey, Şeker Ahmet Paşa and Süleyman Seyyit, who all lived in Paris around 1860-1870, and Halil Paşa, who went to Paris a decade later, are the artists who founded modern Ottoman painting. These artists trained at the Paris studios of renowned artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Boulanger, Alexandre Cabanel and Gustave Courtois. During their time in Paris Ottoman artists not only studied academic painting, but adoped the landscape style of the Barbizon School and were influenced by artists like Gustave Courbet and Fantin-Latour. After 1870 painting in Turkey was largely shaped by these Paris-based art movements, consisting particularly of landscapes, together with subjects like still-lifes and portraits, which were widespread in Western Europe in the second half of the 19th century. When Şeker Ahmet Paşa returned to Turkey he personally organised the first group exhibition to be open to the general public and played a leading role in forming the first collection of Western paintings at Dolmabahçe Palace. Osman Hamdi was the only painter among his contemporaries to focus on scenes with figures rather than landscapes and still-lifes, and he introduced the study of figures at the Academy of Fine Arts, which he had founded.