During the modernization period, Turkish art followed mainly the trends in Paris. Osman Hamdi Bey, Şeker Ahmet Pasha and Süleyman Seyyid who were in Paris in the years 1860-70 and Halil Pasha who joined them 10 years later, are the artists who laid the foundations of modern Ottoman painting.
Halil Pasha received his initial art education in the engineering school.1 Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861- 76) admired his work and appointed him as aide at a young age. In 1880, the artist went to Paris, with his father’s financial support. While a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, he studied at the studios of Jean-Léon Gérôme (d. 1904) and Gustave-Claude-Étienne Courtois (d. 1923). He was awarded a bronze and a gold medal in the exhibitions in Paris and Vienna. His Madam X painting which was awarded a bronze medal at the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition is at present in the SSM collection.
The artist who was given the title ‘pasha’ on his return to Istanbul, was appointed as art teacher at the Mekteb-i Hayriyein 1906. In 1911 he worked as art teacher at the School of Fine Arts where he became the school director in 1917, using the opportunity to strengthen the academic structure of the School with Impressionist artists. A realist artist, influenced by Impressionism he had come to appreciate while in Paris, Halil Pasha mainly painted landscapes and portraits.
In Halil Pasha’s painting exhibited here, a young woman is painting in a traditional Turkish room. She is sitting in an armchair and working on a canvas and her completed works are hanging on the walls. The artist thus draws attention to the changing position of woman in the developing Ottoman society.
