THE PERA SALON EXHIBITIONS IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCHES

Abstract

The Salon Exhibitions that took place in Pera are among the most intriguing events in the history of Ottoman painting. Although these Salon Exhibitions, similar to their counterparts in Paris, were only held three times, they have been regarded by art historians as a critical reference point. Based on this significance, we have had the opportunity to make new interpretations in the light of new sources (from the Bibliotheque Nationale, Library of the Musee des Art Decoratifs in Paris, Istanbul Ataturk Library and Istanbul University Library of Rare Book,) we benefited from in our study. At the first glance it should be said that we have used three different primary sources. These are the articles written in the daily newspapers of the time published in Istanbul such as Stamboul in French, Ikdam and Malumat in Ottoman, catalogues of these salon exhibitions (although the first one is missed), and the photo albums of Yildiz Palace, the most interesting one, which contain almost 40 photographs taken from the halls of 1902 and 1903 Salon exhibitions. As the research method, it can be said that, first we brought together these sources and then matched the data to concrete information which was obtained about the exhibited works of some artists who participated in the 1902 and 1903 exhibitions. At this point it should be noted that Ikdam and Malumat were sometimes using visual materials whereas Stamboul did not. Therefore, we benefited from Stamboul's detailed descriptions in order to identify the paintings some of which are visible in Ikdam's and Malumat's pages at first. The data obtained from exhibition catalogues also helped us to clarify the names of artists and their artworks. In other words, extensive archival research and more effective use of press sources and also cross-reading of different media sources in the same period paved the way to obtain more comprehensive information about the Salon Exhibitions. Consequently, some artists whose works had not been discovered before were identified, and it became possible to make new evaluations regarding the content and style of these artworks based on visual data. As we are of the opinion that lack of visual materials prevent art historians from documentation of their work, we aimed at first to use visual materials as a big component and result of the research. Finally, we should say that we tried to bring together new results as pieces of our documentation and experienced how it becomes possible to evaluate the skills of the artists through the images of their works many of which we cannot access today. We also found out how we should use different sources such as visual data, commentaries and archival documents all of which are based on individual stories and individual artistic activities that took place in Pera in Istanbul, the most cosmopolitan city of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.