CANADIAN PRESS (Toronto, Ontario) 13 December 04 Buyer shells out record $3.5 million for Turkish painting The Turtle Trainer
Istanbul, Turkey (AP): A Turkish foundation has bought a 1906 Ottoman oil painting for $3.5 million US, the highest ever price for a piece by a Turkish painter, newspapers reported Monday.
The Turtle Trainer by Osman Hamdi shows a bearded man in a turban with a flute in his hands and five turtles at his feet.
The painting was part of an art collection that was auctioned Sunday to pay the debts of an insolvent Turkish bank, the daily Radikal and other newspapers reported. The Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation purchased the painting and plans to show it in a new museum.
In 1992, the same painting was sold for $700,000, the highest price for a Turkish painting until Sunday's sale, the newspapers said.
{Wes Note: I found the following about the artist and the work ....}
VI- THE TURTLE TRAINER
The second picture with a different and unique theme of Osman Hamdi is the "Turtle Trainer" (1906, 223 x 117) (9) . Especially in "Sadabad Entertainments" in "Lale Epoch", at night the gardens were lighted with turtles carrying candles on their back, and this knowledge can be the clue in interpreting of the this painting. Thus in the Ottoman State these "turtles" were also included in the pay-roll as "palace-employees" due to their function as living lamps. An allegory between the way a high ranked official like Osman Hamdi (Fine Arts Academy, Archaeological Museum, National Depths Directorate) worked and his subordinates can be sensed here. The Trainer who is painted as Osman Hamdi Bey himself (we remember a more commonly known trainer, the lion trainer) with his reed flute, tongs hanging from his neck and a Dervish's pot on his back (symbol of fatalism) is supervising three turtles eating leaves with their heads bowed in front. The two other turtles at the back are trying to approach to the leaves... This picture can be interpreted as an merciless, hopeless satire of his towards his fellow colleagues at work. The light coming from the only so low window is the important determining factor which coordinatesthe all the other elements of the picture, eliminating all the unnecessary details (think about the hordes of figures and things in the Western Orientalist pictures), and this results in a very successful picture, a masterpiece.
http://www.sanalmuze.org/arastirarakogrenmekeng/osmanhamdi.htm
$3.5 million for Turkish painting The Turtle Trainer
