Abdülmecid Efendi Beyond Vision

Abdülmecid Efendi did not receive an academic education in art, however he grew up within the flourishing artistic atmosphere at court during the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861-1876).  He painted Galleon in the Mist when he was twenty-seven years old.

The dominant element in the misty seascape is the silhouette of a galleon. The galleon, with its flag waving in the wind, looms over a pinnace with clearly visible oars.

In addition to rowers, there are also several passengers and various stacked goods in the smaller vessel. The artist depicts the sun shining through the fog, with rays of white light reflected on the bright blue waters of the sea.

This portrait of a Young Girl , a pastel on paper work by Abdülmecid Efendi dated to 1906, is a painting that the prince made as a copyist. The original painting in this case is the Portrait of Beatrice Cenci , which is currently in the collection of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.

The original portrait depicts a delicate young lady, whereas Abdülmecid Efendi’s painting shows a more stout, childlike figure, with a rounder face. The dramatic treatment of light in the original painting has been further accentuated in this work thanks to the use of pastels.

The Sakıp Sabancı Museum Painting Collection houses two Young Girl portraits, both in identical frames. Abdülmecid Efendi painted this work from the self-portrait of Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842).

In the original painting, Vigée Le Brun depicts herself with a grey and white scarf with gold embroidery tied twice around her neck and wrapped around her head.

Abdülmecid Efendi depicted historical scenes, animal figures, landscapes, still lifes, and especially portraits; however, he rarely focused on architecture or architectural details. In this regard, Mosque Entrance , in the Sakıp Sabancı Museum Collection, is a rare example.

The painting features an inner courtyard clad in marble tiles, with two sea-green columns with spoliated Corinthian capitals and two pointed horseshoe arches; one narrow, the other wide. 

Beneath the wider arch, we can see a half-open wooden door decorated in the kündekâri style, with interlocking geometric elements, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory. The arcade that is just visible through this door evokes aspects of early Islamic architecture.

The lower right corner bears the Arabic script “Abdülmecid bin Abdülaziz Han” as well as the dates 1920 (Gregorian), 1339 (Hijri) and 1337 (Rumi).

Hanzade Sultan is one of many portraits Abdülmecid Efendi painted of members of his family. He painted his granddaughter in Nice in 1936, when he was sixty-eight and she was thirteen years old.

The young Hanzade poses for her grandfather with her hands folded in her lap, seated in a chair placed in front of a saffron-coloured drape. 

The Russo-Turkish War is attributed to Abdülmecid Efendi, though it is not signed. Here, the prince has painted a war scene similar to the military victories depicted by his instructor Stanisław Chlebowski, commissioned by Sultan Abdülaziz.

The Russian soldiers are easily recognisable in their navy blue trench coats, their uniform from the second half of the 19th century until the First World War. Their defeat is emphasised by the way in which they are scattered on the ground and by their smaller size.

X-ray images unveiled that Abdülmecid Efendi painted The Russo-Turkish War over another painting. The image might have been painted by copying another painting. When the X-ray image is rotated anticlockwise by 90 degrees, the figure on horseback becomes clearly visible.

The SEM-EDS results show that the colour green contains arsenic, which suggests that this paint may have been obtained from emerald green pigments.