Osman Hamdi Bey frequently painted portraits of his family members. Among these, those of his second wife, Naile Hanım, appear most prominently. Born Marie Palyart in France in 1863, very little is known about her life aside from the fact that her mother, Germaine Palyart, lived in Istanbul for a period. From her marriage to Osman Hamdi Bey, she had three children: Leyla (1880-1950), Edhem (1882-1957), and Nazlı (1893-1958). Following her husband’s death in 1910, Naile Hanım remained in Istanbul before moving to Paris in the 1930s to join her daughter Nazlı. She returned to Istanbul at the outbreak of the Second World War and, upon her death on 21 September 1943, she was interred at the Latin Catholic Cemetery in Feriköy.
Portraits of Naile Hanım, produced at different stages of her life and in various attire, showing her either in profile or facing forward, share similar compositional structures. This painting in the Sakıp Sabancı Museum Painting Collection stands out for its gilded background that surrounds the figure. Depicted in left profile, Naile Hanım’s clothing and the black veil covering her head are rendered with dynamic brushwork that contrasts with the serene expression of her face. A striking contrast emerges between the dense black occupying nearly half of the canvas and the gilded areas in the rest of the composition.
The gilded background evokes a longstanding tradition in which gold has been associated with sacred or exalted figures – from Ancient Egyptian art to Byzantine icons, Islamic art, and the painting of Medieval and early Renaissance Europe. As one of the pioneers exploring the depiction of women on canvas in early Turkish painting, Osman Hamdi Bey imbues his wife’s portrait with a distinctive resonance, recalling the use of gold backgrounds in Byzantine iconography to convey divinity. This approach finds echoes in nineteenth-century French Symbolism and the circle of Les Nabis, where references to Byzantine iconography are evident. Maurice Denis and Gustave Moreau, for instance, employ decorative uses of gold that resonate with this tradition in modern painting, while the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s ‘golden phase’ offers a contemporaneous parallel in European art.
