[TurkC-L] x0x A Maltese Painter Of Istanbul Scenes
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x0x A Maltese Painter Of Istanbul Scenes
Amadeo Preziosi
*By Turgay Tuna
The fascination for Istanbul in 19th century Europe made the city a
popular destination for western travellers of all descriptions, scholars
and writers, musicians and painters, not to mention the merely curious.
Many of them later published accounts of what they saw and did,
illustrated with sketches or engravings. These books in libraries, museums
and private collections are a valuable source of information about the
daily life, customs, people and buildings of the time. Nineteenth century
Istanbul was still the capital of a huge but diminishing empire, nearing
the end of its long life.
Among the artists who depicted Istanbul in the last century were such
famous names as Melling, Thomas Allom, Eugene Delacroix, Alexandre Decamps
and Eugene Fromentin. They stayed sometimes a few months, sometimes a few
years, and left a legacy of paintings and engravings illustrating the
city’s mosques, palaces, fountains and squares. But there was one who fell
in love with the city, settled down and spent the rest of his life there:
Count Amadeo Preziosi. As a result, his depictions of people and daily
life are full of original detail not to be found in the works of others.
Preziosi was descended from a family which had migrated from Corsica to
Malta in the 17th century and been awarded a title by the king of Sicily.
Preziosi was born in Valetta on 2 December 1816, and spent his childhood
and youth in Malta. His father Count Gio François was an eminent figure in
Malta and a wealthy man. Preziosi was educated by private tutors, and his
passion for drawing and painting began as a child. Although he studied law
in compliance with his parents’ wishes he eventually abandoned this
profession to devote himself to painting, first entering the studio of
Giuseppe Hyzler, and subsequently going to France to complete his art
education at the Paris Academy of Fine Arts.
This was a time when European painters were flocking to the Gateway to the
East, as Istanbul was known, and under this influence Preziosi packed up
his paints and brushes and set out from Malta in 1842, travelling first to
Italy and then to Istanbul. He notes in his memoirs that his original
intention had been to stay for two years, but so absorbed did he become in
the sights and bewitching atmosphere of this city that it held him like a
magnet, and he hardly noticed the passing of the years.
Sketchbook under arm he wandered its streets, caught up in an increasing
love for the city and its people. Istanbul returned Preziosi’s affection,
and he was welcomed everywhere, in tiny back street shops, coffee houses,
hamams (Turkish baths), and places of worship. In his canvases he
immortalised the humdrum sights of daily life: a street seller, a dancing
bear, a woman filling her water jar at a street fountain. Through his eyes
we also see the blue waters of the Bosphorus with caiques gliding along,
pavilions and palaces. His paintings sold well among local and foreign
customers alike, who hung them on the walls of their grand houses and
palaces.
Despite his father’s entreaties Amadeo Preziosi refused to return to
Malta, where the other members of his family followed ‘respectable’
careers as doctors, merchants and lawyers. He remained loyal to the
passionate loves of his life: Istanbul and painting. As well as his mother
tongue of Italian, Preziosi spoke French, Greek, English and Turkish. He
married an Istanbul Greek woman and the couple had four children, three
girls and one boy.
For many years they lived in Beyoðlu, at number 14 Hamalbaþý Sokak near
the present British Consulate. When he wanted to get away from the bustle
of city life he went to Yeþilköy, then an outlying country district on the
Marmara coast. Here he had friends among the Levantine families, and spent
much time hunting. This area west of Istanbul was famous for its game
until engulfed by the growing city during the 20th century, and Preziosi
purchased a hunting lodge where he spent much of his time. On 27 September
1882, when he was 65, he was hunting with a party around Yeþilköy when he
accidentally dropped his rifle. It went off, causing injuries of which
Preziosi died the following day.
Lithographs of Preziosi’s paintings were published in two albums,
Stamboul: Recollections of Eastern Life In 1858, and Stamboul: Souvenir
d’Orient in 1861. In 1883, the year after his death, a third album was
published entitled Encyclopedie Des Arts Decoratifs de L’Orient: Stamboul
- Moeurs et Costumes, with a foreword by Victor Champier, who wrote of
Preziosi and the Istanbul which he depicted: ‘Istanbul... This word sounds
to the ear like a battle cry or a song of victory. Istanbul is the name
given by the Turks to this glorious city, once known as Byzantium and
today also as Constantinople. It is Istanbul, with its winding streets,
markets, picturesque excursion places and curious sights, whose life and
true substance Monsieur Amadeo Preziosi presents to us in his
watercolours... Certainly one rarely encounters an artist who has left his
homeland at a young age, and made a home for himself in the bosom of a
civilisation little known even in Europe. This is an artist whose eyes
have been rinsed in the splendid light of the Orient, enabling him to
capture the depth of its meaning and enjoy the happiness of sensing the
strength and capacity of its spirit.
’Count Preziosi’s paintings were exhibited in Paris and London in 1858,
1863 and 1867. For some years he was court painter to Sultan Abdülhamid
II, and today examples can be seen in the Istanbul Museum of Painting and
Sculpture, Topkapý Palace, the Naval Museum and several private
collections. Preziosi was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Yeþilköy,
where his grave still stands today.
* Turgay Tuna is a freelance writer
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