PAIR OF OTTOMAN TURBAN STANDS DECORATED WITH SPRING FLOWERS IN A VASE

With flat back panel and bracketed shelf, decorated in carved deep relief and painted in polychrome and gilt, with a central bouquet in a vase flanked by columns and framed by acanthus swags and c-scrolls.

In the Ottoman period flowers, like those decorating the present turban stands, were a constant part of daily life, grown in gardens everywhere, from palaces to humble homes. Foreign travellers and ambassadors who visited the empire frequently remarked about this love of flowers. The 17th century Ottoman writer and traveller Evliya Çelebi describes how vases of roses, tulips, hyacinths, narcissi and lilies were placed between the rows of worshippers in the Eski Mosque and the Üç Şerefeli Mosque in Edirne, and how their scent filled the prayer halls. As depicted in the present turban stands, vases of flowers adorned niches in the walls, dining trays and rows of vases were placed around rooms and pools. For further information about ‘flowers in baskets or vases’ motifs please see, Motif from the Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (written by Turgut Saner, Şebnem Eryavuz and Hülya Bilgi), Sadberk Hanım Museum, Istanbul, 2020, pp. 110-111.

The most beautiful and finely crafted examples of the so-called Edirnekâri turban stands were made in Istanbul, in the eighteenth century. Turbans expressed the prestige, reputation and eminence of those who wore them; hence, special turban stands were created so that they did not touch the ground. These stands were meant to be positioned with the turbans sitting at eye level. An Eighteenth-century turban stand similar to the present pair is in the Topkapi Palace Museum (Inv. No. 8/924).

Provenance: Ex-Private UK Collection

An Exceptionally Rare Panoramic View Of Constantinople

BY ANTOINE-IGNACE MELLING (1763-1831)

COURT PAINTER TO SULTAN SELIM III’S (R. 1789-1807)

SISTER HATICE SULTAN & NAPOLEON’S WIFE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE

Charcoal, Indian ink, Watercolour and Gouache on Paper

Signed and Dated: “Melling An 1802”, also signed in Arabic/ Ottoman letters

“sawwada Melling 1802” (Melling drew this 1802).

Dimensions: 47 x 94 cm.

This panoramic painting is almost identical to the view published in Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du Bosphore Paris, Strassburg, London, Treuttel et Würtz, 1809-1819, Pl. 5 Vue général du Port de Constantinople prise des hauteurs d’Eyoub).

In this painting, Melling depicts the city of Constantinople, as seen from the district of Eyup, overlooking the Golden Horn (Haliç). On the left, there are ladies pick-nicking and a servant fetching water from the fountain. In the middle, camels, led by a donkey, are moving toward the right. Melling depicts the panoramic view, the monuments, buildings and different aspects of the city’s daily life with meticulous accuracy and attention to detail.

Beyond, to the left, is the clear outline of the Galata Tower. At the end of the Golden Horn, behind the old city walls is the dome of the great Hagia Sophia, the sixth century Byzantine church that became a mosque in 1453. The painting also captures the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque), the Bayezid Mosque, the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Fatih Mosque, and the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque, and lastly the early 19th century mosque complex enclosing the shrine at Eyup to the lower right.

In this painting, Melling documents a highly original aspect of the city’s urban history; the 18th century waterside-mansions on the Golden Horn. There were many waterside mansions owned by members of the Ottoman palace circle in Eyup and the neighbouring districts, most important of all, the Valide Yalısı (the Sultan’s mother’s waterside-mansion). Throughout the 18th century waterside-mansions on the Golden Horn were very fashionable among the elite. This changed with the increasing interest in the waterside-mansions on the Bosphorus in the 19th century.

The Eyup district has a special place in the history of Constantinople. Five years after the conquest of the city by the Turks in 1453, a mosque was built in this neighbourhood, that was named after Ayyub alAnsari (Eyüp in Turkish), a companion of the Prophet Muhammad who fell in the First Arab Siege, in 674-8 C.E. The mosque in particular and the Eyup district in general are thus greatly revered and visited almost like a place of pilgrimage by Muslims.

According to the French envoy’s secretary M. de Monconys in 1648, the Okmeydanı district was a favourite spot for the French ambassador and the French tourists. By the late 18th century Okmeydanı left its place to Eyup. Perhaps for this reason Melling produced some of his best quality drawings from Eyup. Auguste Boppe, Les Orientalistes – Les Peintres du Bosphore au XVIIIe Siècle ACR Edition, Paris, 1989, p. 235. For a similar view by Melling with a view from Eyup please see, Ibid 1989, p. 249.

Here, in addition to his signature and date, in the Latin alphabet and numerals, Melling signed his name and dated this piece in Arabic/Ottoman letters and numerals. At the end of the fountain’s foundation inscription, the last three lines read “sawwada Melling 1802” (Melling drew this 1802).

The present painting is important both in terms of its artistic value and as a historical record documenting the view of Constantinople in the year 1802.

Watercolours by Melling are extremely rare and only a few have appeared in the market:

• Melling’s Vue de la première cour intérieure du sérail à Constantinople was sold at Sotheby’s Paris, in 29 October 2008, Lot 6, for €480,750.

• His Caïques devant le Place et les Casernes de Tophané was sold at Gros & Delettrez, in 18 June 2012, Lot 158, for €600,000.

• His Vue du Bosphore prise à Kandilly was sold at Gros & Delettrez, in 18 June 2012, Lot 159, for €550,000.

Court Artist Antione-Ignace Melling (d. 1831)

Born in 1763 in Karlsruhe, Baden, Antoine-Ignace Melling was brought up by his uncle in Strassburg. In 1785 he arrived in Istanbul as a member of the Russian ambassador’s retinue. He drew pictures for the ambassadors of Britain and the Netherlands. Later, the Danish envoy Baron Hubsch von Grossthal introduced him to Sultan Selim III’s sister Princess Hatice Sultan (1766–1822). Hatice Sultan was a patron of the arts and a remarkable collector. She preferred Dresden or Sevres porcelain rather than China. After visiting Hubsch’s European garden at the neighbourhood of Büyükdere on the Bosphorus, Hatice Sultan told Hubsch that she wanted a European garden. Hubsch recommended Melling and Hatice Sultan became his patron for 18 years. During this period Melling worked as her personal painter, architect and garden designer and eventually became her closest companion. Auguste Boppe, Les Orientalistes – Les Peintres du Bosphore au XVIIIe Siècle, ACR Edition, Paris, 1989, p. 249.

After designing Hatice Sultan’s European garden Melling redecorated her palace. Soon, a neoclassical palace for the princess arose at the Defterdarburnu district on the Bosphorus. Melling also designed dresses, cutlery and furniture for the princess and kiosks for Selim III and his mother at Beşiktaş. Hatice Sultan wrote letters to Melling in Ottoman Turkish penned in the Latin alphabet which he may have taught her.

Melling’s closeness to Hatice Sultan opened many doors for him while he lived in the Ottoman capital and he was introduced to many members of the Ottoman elite. He and his friend Jacob Ensle (Selim III’s chief gardener) had limitless access to the imperial palace. Ibid 1989, p.257. Eventually, Melling became permanent member of Selim III’s stately ceremonies. He reflected his impressions from the sultan’s Friday prayer processions, visiting ambassadors’ processions, janissaries’ ceremonies, imperial feasts to his paintings with amazing attention to detail and accuracy. He was permitted to walk and converse with harem ladies from Hatice Sultan’s circle in the palace gardens; a rare privilege for a foreigner. Ibid, 1989, p. 248. Until 1803 he lived in Constantinople and painted rich and vivid views of the city. In his paintings he depicted many of the people he had met in real life. Ibid, 1989, p. 242. He went to Paris in 1803 with his Levantine wife FrancoiseLouise Colombo. There he published a prospectus for the Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore. With the help of Talleyrand he was appointed landscape painter to the Emperor Napoleon's wife, the Empress Josephine. Please see, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/ BIOG38088

By 1809 he had set up an engraving studio for the purpose of reproducing completed images of his drawings. A series of facsimiles were sent out to subscribers, between 1809 and 1819. Etchings with engraving by Schroeder, Duplessi-Bertaux, and Pigeot after Melling, were produced with later professional hand-colouring. On 25 August 1819, the magnificent folio volume, Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore was finally published with the financial support of the French government. In 1831 Melling died in Paris as a celebrated artist.

Contre-Amiral Eugène-Marie Le Leon

The Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk dedicates a whole chapter to Melling in his autobiographical memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City. Pamuk claims that Melling “saw the city like an Istanbulite but painted it like a clear-eyed Westerner”. Accurate and elegant, Melling’s drawings document the meetings of two different cultures; a western artist working for an Ottoman princess in Constantinople, during the reign of Selim III.

Provenance:

Contre-Amiral Eugène-Marie Le Leon (1848-1937), in the family collection since 1880, thence by descent to Le Leon’s great-grand daughter.

Contre-Amiral Eugène-Marie Le Leon (1848-1937)

Eugène-Marie Le Leon was born in Lorient, in 16 June 1848. His first official expedition was to Sibylle, in 1867. In 1870 he travelled to the North Sea. He was appointed lieutenant in 1876. In 1877 he led his first expedition as captain. Later, he followed the battle between Peru and Bolivia in the Pasific Ocean. He was appointed captain to Oche. He became contre-amiral (rear-admiral) in 1907. He held the following posts: Major General of the 3rd maritime district and commander of the Lorient arsenal, then placed in the reserve section in 1910. He received the Légion d’Honneur in 1889.

He published Souvenirs d’une Mission a L’armée Chilienne: Batailles de Chorrillos et de Miraflores in 1883. In the photograph accompanying this text, he wears rear admiral's full dress model 1902 with black feathered cocked hat. He wears the single row embroidered tunic with a single row of buttons for General Officers. He also wears the following medals: Officer of the Légion d’Honneur Commemorative Medal of the Madagascar Expedition, Colonial Medal, Commander of the Crown of Italy, Medal of Mejidiye of the Ottoman Empire. Le Leon died in 1937.

Oil on Canvas.

Height: 44 cm.

Width: 62 cm

Armenian Interior

ATTRIBUTED TO GIANANTONIO GUARDI (1699-1760)

The present painting is a rare, early 18th century depiction of an Armenian gentleman in a harem interior, surrounded by ladies. An almost identical painting, after Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (d. 1737), painted by Gianantonio Guardi for Comte de Schulenbourg, titled ‘Interno Armeno (Armenian interior), with the same dimensions, in the Fondazione Giorgino Cini collection in Venice, is published in the exhibition catalogue Guardi – Quadri Turcheschi 28 August – 21 November 1993, Fondazione Giorgino Cini, Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, Venice, p. 31.

Jean-Baptiste Vanmour’s painting with the same subject, now in a private collection, is published in Auguste Boppe, Les Peintres du Bosphore au XVIIIe Siècle, ACR Edition, Paris, 1989, p. 52. Please also see, Guardi – Quadri Turcheschi 28 August – 21 November 1993, Fondazione Giorgino Cini, Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, Venice, p. 121 (This publication states that it is in the Emmanuel Boppe Collection, Geneva).

The gentleman wearing a black headgear, seated in the back, next to the seated lady on the right, has been identified as a ‘notable Armenian’ in the 1993 Guardi exhibition catalogue. Please see, Guardi –Quadri Turcheschi 28 August – 21 November 1993, Fondazione Giorgino Cini, Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, Venice, p. 120.

Vanmour’s paintings, depicting the Dutch ambassador’s visits to the Topkapi Palace, allow us to identify the occupation of this ‘notable Armenian’. His black headgear is exactly the same as those worn by the Armenian interpreters (dragomans) accompanying the Dutch ambassador Cornelis Calkoen (1696-1764) in Vanmour’s The Feast Held in Honour of Ambassador Calkoen For an illustration of this painting please see the exhibition catalogue, Lale Devrinin bir Görgü Tanığı Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (Texts written by Eveline Sint Nicolaes et al), Koçbank, Istanbul, 2003, p. 193.

In the present painting, the interior decoration, the marble fountain and furniture in the harem indicate the wealth of the seated gentleman, possibly an Armenian interpreter. The fountain resembles the famous square marble fountain in the Topkapi Palace, located in the middle of the imperial pool called the Sofa-i Hümayun Havuzu It is a rare, mid-18th century depiction of an Armenian interior, demonstrating the beauty, richness and colourfulness of the lives of the Istanbul elite.

GIANANTONIO GUARDI

(B. VIENNA 1699 – D. VENICE 1760)

He was born in Vienna into a family of nobility from Trentino. His father Domenico (born in 1678) was a Baroque painter. Gianantonio and his brothers Niccolò and Francesco (also painters), later inherited the family workshop after their father’s death in 1716. They probably all contributed as a team to some of the larger commissions later attributed to his brother Francesco Guardi. His sister Maria Cecilia married the pre-eminent Veneto-European painter of his epoch, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. He may have received his artistic training in Vienna, where he is first recorded in 1719, but had established a workshop in Venice by 1730. Among his first important clients was the connoisseur and collector Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, for whom Guardi created numerous paintings with an Orientalist theme.

He painted Turkish-inspired interiors as easel pictures for private decorations. Antonio Guardi trained his younger brothers Nicolò and Francesco in his workshop, the latter working closely with him as a figure painter before establishing himself as a vedutista in the late 1750s. A founder member of the Accademia Veneziana in 1756, the elder Guardi produced several works for churches in Venice, notably in the Church of the Angelo San Raffaele, as well as decorative cycles for palaces and villas in the city and the surrounding countryside. Francesco Casanova was among his pupils. He died in Venice in 1760.

Provenance:

Sold in Paris, Hotel George V, Ader - Tajan, October 25, 1994, no. 413.

Ex-Edmonde Charles-Roux (1920-2016) Collection

Ex-François Charles- Roux (1879-1961) Collection, Ambassador of France.

François Charles-Roux (1879-1961)

Charles-Roux, the son of Jules Charles-Roux, studied at the École libre des sciences politiques. This led to a diplomatic career in Paris, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Cairo, London and Rome before being appointed Ambassador for France in Czechoslovakia in 1932. In May 1940, he succeeded Alexis Léger to the position of Secretary General of the French Foreign Ministry but left office the following October.

After World War II, he was a strong supporter of keeping the French colonial empire including the ultra group Présence française which fought for the maintenance of the French protectorate in Morocco. He was chairman of the Central Committee of the Ministry of Overseas France and President of the Suez Canal Company from 1948 to 1956. He also chaired the Catholic Relief. His work as a historian led to him being elected a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Science in 1934. François Charles-Roux married Sabine Gounelle in 1914. She was from a family of merchants in Marseille who owned the Villa Valmer. They had three children: the writer Edmonde Charles-Roux, socialite Cyprienne Charles-Roux, and priest Jean-Marie Charles-Roux. François Charles-Roux died in 1961.

Edmonde Charles-Roux (1920-2016)

Charles-Roux was a French writer. She was born in 1920 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, the daughter of Francois CharlesRoux, the former French ambassador to Czechoslovakia, a member of the Institut de France and the last chairman of the Suez Canal Company. Her paternal grandfather, Jules Charles-Roux, was a businessman and politician. Charles-Roux was a volunteer nurse in World War II, at first in a French Foreign Legion unit, the 11th infantry regiment abroad. She was wounded at Verdun while bringing aid to a legionnaire.

Then she joined the Resistance, again as a nurse. After the landings in Provence, she was attached to the 5th Armored Division, where she performed as a nurse but also as a divisional social assistant. She also served in the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (1er REC) and the Mechanized Regiment of the Foreign Legion (RMLE).

Decorated with the Croix de Guerre, she was made Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 1945, and received the distinction of Vivandière d’honneur from the RMLE at the hands of Louis-Antoine Gaultier, corps commander. In 1946, she joined the staff of a magazine being created, a women’s weekly: Elle, where she spent two years. From 1948, she worked for the French edition of Vogue becoming the magazine’s editor-inchief in 1954.

By combining ready-to-wear and pop art, she connected fashion with any other form of creativity. She left Vogue Paris in 1966, as the result of a conflict for wanting to place a black woman on the cover of the magazine. Three months later, in 1966, she wrote Oublier Palerme and obtained the Prix Goncourt; the novel was adapted to film as Dimenticare Palermo in 1990 by Francesco Rosi.

The same year that she won the Goncourt she met Gaston Defferre, the mayor of Marseille, and they married in 1973. Charles-Roux is also known for her photo stories on the lives of Defferre (L’Homme de Marseille 2001), and of Coco Chanel (Chanel Time 2004). She wrote the books of several of Roland Petit ballets, including Le Guépard and Nana. She became a member of the Académie Goncourt in 1983, and president in 2002. In 2008, she was part of the Commission headed by Hugues Gall and charged by Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture, with recommending a candidate for the post of Director of the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici. In April 2010, she was awarded by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with the rank of Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur Edmonde Charles-Roux died on 20 January 2016, in Marseille.

Ottoman Empire Marble Fountain: Reign of Sultan Ahmed III (1703-1730)

Brass Tap: 19th Century

Dimensions: 122 x 75.5 cm.