Figurative Outlook and Interpretation of History in the Ottoman Painture in the Last Period of the Empire

Abstract

In this article, the approach of Ottoman artists and the Ottoman painters towards the history in the last century is assessed with examples of some selected pictures in the Ottoman painture repertoire, in which the historical characters, who constitute references to the Republican period figurative paintings and persons, remind historical events with their historical characters. Among the pictures drawn within this framework, there are a considerable number of paintings of political and military characters of the 19th century. The examples mentioned in this article, which represents the sequel of the Ottoman art from the period of Sultan Ahmed the Third (1703-1730), in which the Turkish figurative art seems to have interrupted after the famous miniature masters, Abdülcelil Çelebi (Levni) and Abdullah Buhari, to the 1910s, when it revived, contribute to introducing the figurative dialectic between the miniature-painture traditions. This period also constitute the second stage in the Ottoman painture.