#pera museum

[baebeylik]

Weight signed by Decius. Roman, 249-251 CE.

Pera Museum.

[galleryofart]

Enjoying Coffee

Artist: French School

Date: First half of 18th century

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey

Description

In this painting, an Ottoman lady drinking coffee and her servant are depicted in dresses in the fashion of those days. The source of its inspiration is “Turkish Girl Drinking Coffee on the Divan”, an engraving found in Receuil de cent estampes répresentant differentes nations du Levant illustrated by Vanmour. The difference is that the servant offering the coffee is not standing, but squatting to the left of her lady. Both the necklace around the neck of the lady and the ornate headdresses are copied from the pictures of two women in the book Reisen van Cornelis de Bruyn first published in 1698 by Cornelis de Bruyn, a Dutch traveller and painter who came to the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century.

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #WorldTurtleDay on a #TurtleTuesday + #TwoForTuesday: what does this unusual 18th c. English portrait have in common with this early 20th c. Ottoman one from Pera Müzesi? More than you may think! 😉Find out more on the blog:

ANIMAL ART OF THE DAY for World Turtle Day: an unusual tortoise portrait from 18th Century England, and its connection to Ottoman Turkey https://arthistoryanimalia.com/2023/05/23/animal-art-of-the-day-for-world-turtle-day-an-unusual-tortoise-portrait-from-18th-century-england-and-its-connection-to-ottoman-turkey/

Still Life With a Tortoise, 1743 possibly by Thomas Black (English, 1715-1777) oil on canvas, 74.9 x 96.5 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Tortoise Trainer, 1906 version by Osman Hamdi Bey (Ottoman, 1842-1910) oil on canvas, 221.5 x 120 cm Pera Müzesi

[garadinervi]

Etel Adnan: Exoristes lexeis, (2008, 52 min; still), Directed by Vouvoula Skoura, Written by Etel Adnan, Vouvoula Skoura, and Fawwaz Traboulsi [Pera Museum, İstanbul]

[lionofchaeronea]

Enjoying Coffee, unknown artist (French School), 1st half of 18th century

[tomrisseveriz]

[confrontthefamiliar]

The Pera Museum was amazing. A lot of incredibly important art that I needed to see that brought me closer to an understanding of Turkey’s political dynamics, along with exposures of commentaries on power structures of other countries like Pakistan, the UAE, Albania, and Iran.

I especially connected personally to all art by the artist, Canan, shown in the last three pictures: http://www.cananxcanan.com

CANAN

[roambarefoot]

The Tortoise Trainer

Osman Hamdi Bey

Oil on canvas 221.5 x 120 cm

Early 20th Century

As the first and last Orientalist painter of the Ottoman Empire, Osman Hamdi Bey had the unique opportunity to observe the East from within. Rather than depicting the “other” as a number of foreign painters did, he portrayed his own culture and propounded his own cultural perceptions. His works, which often reflect the Ottoman tradition and culture, manifest a meticulous and realistic approach to all the elements featured in a scene, ranging from daily life to architecture and from objects to ornamentation. Osman Hamdi is an artist who not only incorporates the use of figures, but also introduces an intellectual dimension to Turkish painting.  The Tortoise Trainer should thus be evaluated in light of this dual aspect. Osman Hamdi, who often used his own photographs as models in his figurative compositions, once again repeats the same technique in this painting and depicts himself in the appearance of a dervish. The architectural décor suggests that the scene takes place in one of the upper-story chambers of Bursa’s Yeşil Camii (Green Mosque). Dressed as a dervish and slightly bent over, a man is examining in a contemplative fashion, the tortoises roaming on the floor. He sports an araqiyya, a flattish skull cap commonly worn by dervishes, with a destar, or sash wrapped around it. He wears a belted, long red robe the borders of which are embroidered; his feet are clad in çedik, or slippers for indoor wear, made of yellow sahtiyan, Moroccan (goatskin) leather. He holds a ney in one of the hands he has clasped behind; a nakkare, or a small kettledrum hangs down from his back. While all these details do not necessarily signify allegiance to a particular sect, they are nonetheless elements derived from the attire of a dervish. The dervish is to train these thick-shelled, laggardly tortoises not by using force, but rather by playing the ney and nakkare, namely through art.

*Text obtained from the Pera Museum website on 7/7/20.