Lot 67

PROPERTY OF A LADYThe following seven watercolours by Preziosi are part of a broad collection of works brought together over the course of three decades by the keen eye of a distinguished collector.Amadeo, 5th Count Preziosi, came from one of the foremost families of the Maltese nobility, but found fame in Muslim Turkey, as an artist who depicted, with colour and panache, the life and landscape of Istanbul, in all its cosmopolitan variety. Instead of the legal career that his father had envisaged for him, Preziosi studied art in Paris, and from 1842 was based in Istanbul until his death forty years later. Here he established a very productive studio, painting picturesque views of the city for a wide variety of European visitors. His representations of the capital of the Ottoman Empire were bought by royal, aristocratic and middle-class tourists, who carried them home as vivid reminders of a society that was at the same time both alien and familiar. These examples of the artist’s mature work demonstrate his skill in combining an acute observation of local customs with a confident grasp of the complex topography of Istanbul and the Bosphorus.

Count Amadeo Preziosi (Maltese, 1816-1882)

The Cemetery at Eyüp, Constantinople

Details

Count Amadeo Preziosi (Maltese, 1816-1882)
The Cemetery at Eyüp, Constantinople
signed and dated 'Preziosi/1863' (lower left)
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper
16 x 21 ½ in. (40.5 x 54.7 cm.)

Brought to you by

Clare Keiller

ckeiller@christies.com +44(0)20 7389 2729

Lot Essay

Eyüp, situated at the western end of the Golden Horn, has been a place of pilgrimage since the rediscovery of the grave of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. He was the companion and standard-bearer of the Prophet Muhammad, and fell in the first attempted siege of Constantinople in 674. Nearly eight centuries later, soon after the Conquest of Istanbul, Sultan Mehmet II ordered a tomb and the Eyüp Sultan Mosque to be constructed over where he had been interred. It was the wish of many pious Muslims to be buried in the vicinity, and this picture show clearly the carved and painted tombstones of men and women, alongside the steep path that leads up the hill from the mosque complex below. Similar versions of this view are dated 1853 and 1854.
We are grateful to Briony Llewellyn and Charles Newton for their assistance in cataloguing the present lot.

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