(Stibbe 1846–1927 Berlin)
A view of Istanbul, signed, dated Ernst Koerner 1922, oil on canvas, 34 x 52 cm, framed, (Rei)

Ernst Carl Eugen Koerner, born in 1846, first undertook a number of study trips through Europe before embarking on several voyages to the Orient in the 1870s, which were to shape his subsequent work. His journeys mainly led him through Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, and as a result, he took numerous watercolour studies with him to Berlin, where he finally turned the motifs into finished paintings in his studio.
Orientalist painting increasingly formed the heart of his creative work, with his extraordinary talent for reproducing lighting being of great advantage to him in this respect. This is also the case in the present lot, in which Koerner demonstrates how the Golden Horn of Istanbul got its name. Thus writes Rosenberg about Koerner: “The delicacy and accuracy of his observation and the suppleness of his colour palette do justice to even the most delicate poetic mood, without the painter exaggerating what he really sees for the sake of creating a captivating effect.” (Thieme-Becker, Leipzig 1927, p. 181). Here, too, Koerner captures the lighting on the Bosporus in an impressionistic manner, without pushing it to the level of exaggeration. The second largest mosque in the city, the Süleymaniye Mosque, rises in the centre of the painting, a radiant, white structure. To the right, the Beyazit Tower and the Fatih Mosque stand out from the cityscape. Koerner is near obsessed with this view of the city on the border of Europe and the Orient, and, consequently, several versions of it are created in different lighting conditions and times of day. As a result, the present lot finally confirms the judgement of Thieme-Becker, who declares Koerner to be one of the best colourists of the Berlin school.