On the evening of 2 May 2023, the sale room was overcrowded again for the first time since the pandemic. The atmosphere was tense when the auction bell sounded for Osman Hamdi Bey's painting “Ottoman Lady, Preparing for an Outing”, at one million. Amid applause, this depiction of a young lady in an opulent interior was sold as the top lot of the 19th-Century Paintings auction for 1.275 million euros. It was the second million-dollar sale after 2019 for a work by Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910), the leading Ottoman painter of his time.
The Paris-trained artist is the founder modern Turkish painting, combining East and West, tradition and modernity, Western academic painting with Eastern sophistication. At the Vienna World’s Fair, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, Osman Hamdi Bey was appointed commissioner for the Ottoman Empire’s pavilion.
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