This spring, one of London’s important auction houses, Sotheby’s, will present “Preparing Coffee”, a long-lost painting by Osman Hamdi Bey, probably the most esteemed figure in the canon of Ottoman painting.
On April 29th, as part of the long-anticipated sale of works of Oriental art, the auction house will present “Preparing Coffee”, which is estimated at around 1.5 million pounds (about two million dollars or 1.7 million euros).
The composition “Preparing Coffee” from 1881 has reappeared after more than a century in private European collections. Until recently, it was known only from a black-and-white photograph taken the same year by the famous photographers Pascal Sebah and Policarpe Joaillier.
“This is a very unexpected rediscovery,” explains Claude Piening, senior international specialist for European paintings at Sotheby’s.
He stated that he was recently approached by a man he has known for a long time, who offered him this painting.
“He recently bought it from someone else who had bought it a few years ago, from a family – a European family – in whose possession it had been for almost 75 years, certainly since 1930,” explained Piening.
Around 1910, the painting was owned by Prince Sadiq Yadigarov, an art collector from Georgia, and then it passed to his son, and after that, it was owned by a collector from Vienna.
Since then, it had been in another Austrian private collection until its recent reappearance.
Set in the interior of a richly tiled, colonnaded – perhaps imagined harem complex in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul – it depicts two young women preparing coffee.
The setting is fictional, but constructed with exceptional attention to detail.
Coffee, the central motif of Middle Eastern life, becomes a gateway to a broader cultural dialogue.
“I think it’s wonderful to have that as the central motif of the painting. The painting shows a coffee pot with zarfs, which are holders for cups. That is clearly an essentially Turkish – or shall I say, Ottoman – feature of the painting,” notes Piening.
The objects within the painting add layers of cultural symbolism and material wealth: a velvet and metal-threaded tablecloth supporting the coffee pot and zarfs, a Mamluk brass bowl, Chinese porcelain vases, embroidered towels, and a rare decorative pendant made from an ostrich egg – once a symbol of the Ottoman kingdom.
For Hamdi Bey, the painting marks a peak in a short but intense period of artistic productivity, says Piening.
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.
Adopting Western artistic techniques to depict Eastern themes, Hamdi Bey not only responded to the growing market for Orientalist art in the 19th century but also used his deep understanding of Muslim culture to create nuanced, respectful depictions of Ottoman life.
“What you will also notice about the painting is that it is painted in what we would call the French academic style… But on the one hand, the painting is clearly on a Turkish theme and is presented through the eyes of a Turkish painter, which I think is a beautiful idea, but in a style that is not native to Turkey,” explained Piening.
Upon returning to Istanbul, Hamdi Bey performed diplomatic duties and led numerous archaeological expeditions.
In 1882, he founded the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts, becoming its first director and forming a new generation of Turkish artists.
The work of Hamdi Bey is represented in museums around the world – in the United States (U.S.), the Middle East, Abu Dhabi, and Malaysia, AA writes.
Photo: Anadolu Agency
