Lot 60: Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (Valenciennes 1671-1737 Constantinople)

Armenian women embroidering in an interior; Armenian women drinking coffee in an interior; Armenian interior with a sultan and his favourite; and Greek sailors merrymaking in an interior
oil on canvas
17 1/4 x 24 3/8 in. (44 x 62 cm.)
a set of 4 (4)

Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, La turquerie au XVIIIème sièecle, 1911, nos. 113-116.
Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini-Istituto di Storia dell'Arte, Guardi, quadri turcheschi, 28 August-21 November 1993, nos. 40, 45, 47-48.

A. Boppe, Les peintres du Bosphore au XVIIIème sile, Courbevoie, 1989, pp. 48-53, illustrated, and p. 295, nos. 65-68.

Auguste Boppe, and by descent to the present owners.

The son of a carpenter, Vanmour was born in Valenciennes in 1671 while the city was still under the rule of the Spanish Netherlands. Seven years later it fell to Louis XIV's armies and became French. As Vanmour refused to join the Confrère de Saint Luc, he was obliged to leave the town. Hired by the Marquis Charles de Ferriol, French ambassador in Turkey, he settled in Constantinople at the end of the 17th century, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. Ferriol commissioned a series of paintings of the costumes of the Ottoman Empire. The subsequent engravings, published in 1712 in the Recueil de cent estampes représentant différentes nations du Levant, were enormously popular with the French Court for at least 70 years; the Recueil was translated and reprinted in many languages and became a pattern book for Turkish costumes in eighteenth and nineteenth century books and porcelain. Vanmour's reputation was so great that the engravings were copied by artists such as Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Francis Smith. In Italy, Francesco Guardi's elder brother, Giovanni Antonio, freely copied 43 pictures by Vanmour, representing Turqueries, for the benefit of the Field Marshal Count Johannes Matthias von der Schulenburg, who had successfully defeated the Turks at Corfu in 1715-6.

Introduced into European diplomatic circles and a favourite of the Turkish Court, Vanmour was able to record the numerous festivities and official receptions given by the Grand Seigneur as well as scenes of everyday life. Named 'peintre ordinaire du Roi en Levant' in 1725 (a title invented for him), he often portrayed Sultan Ahmad III, who ruled from 1703 until his deposition in 1730. Many of his pictures, collected by the Dutch Ambassador Cornelius Calkoen, are now in Dutch museums.

Vanmour specialised in four types of paintings: topographical views, ethnographic portraits, ethnographic scenes and historical scenes. Although his portraits show a stiffness in the depiction of the models, his obvious fascination for the Ottoman world, as well as the accuracy and the quality of details and costumes in his paintings, explain why he is considered a major precursor to Orientalism, and why he became, in the 18th century, the leader of the 'Van Mour school'.

The first picture is a faithful description of the oriental embroidery technique, in which several assistants prepare the spools, and unwind the thread. A maid is preparing the tchibouk, a long pipe which the women will smoke later. In the second picture, the patterns on the pillows, the embroidered bags and the painted windows are typically Turkish. A maid is serving coffee in zarfs, while the hostess offers fruit to her guests. The third picture shows an Armenian nobleman and his favourite. He is wearing the kalpak, a red bonnet lined with fur, which was worn by Armenians, but also by the dragomans, who played the role of interpreters in the European embassies. The fountain represents a stylised Istambul mosque. A similar picture by Vanmour, in which the main group is playing cards, is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. A2010). Another version, by Antonio Guardi, is in the Cini foundation, Venice. The costumes and the taboura (a stringed instrument) show that the men depicted in the fourth picture are leventi, Greek sailors working in Turkey. They had a reputation for their licentious behaviour, and a taste for wine, music and women. A similar composition, but set outdoors, is in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. A.2011).

Born in Nancy in 1862, Auguste Boppe started his diplomatic career at the French Embassy in Istanbul. He was to return in this town at three different steps in his career. A great collector of Islamic art, he also published, from 1903 until 1910, different pioneering studies on the 18th century painters who went to Constantinople. These studies were compiled in the book of reference Les peintres du Bosphore au XVIIIème siècle published in 1911, whose success was to lead to four different editions. The first part of the book was dedicated to the fashion of the Turquerie in France, which developed with the arrival in Paris of the Ambassador Mehmet Effendi in 1721 and lasted sixty years. Vanmour, whose name and fame had been forgotten, was the subject of the first study. Auguste Boppe died in Peking, where he was French Ambassador, in 1921.

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