(Vienna 1803–1887)
Portrait of an Oriental Man in Profile (a Turk), signed, inscribed and dated Amerling Constantinopel 1855, oil on canvas, 54 x 44 cm, framed

Provenance:
Albert Kende, Vienna, 24 October 1935, lot 88;
Dorotheum, Vienna, 4 February 1938, lot 582;
Private Collection Austria.

Catalogued in:
Günther Probszt, Friedrich von Amerling, Der Altmeister der Wiener Porträtmalerei, Zurich, Leipzig, Vienna 1927, p. 144, no. 898.

We are grateful to Dr. Sabine Grabner for her scientific assistance.

The present lot is linked to a unique episode in the life of Friedrich von Amerling. The Counsellor of the Turkish Embassy in Vienna, Mr. Manass, commissioned a portrait from Amerling. When news of the extremely accomplished painting reached Constantinople, the Sultan invited the artist to the city on the Bosporus in order to portray him as well. Amerling accepted the invitation – but was obliged to wait several weeks for an audience. L. A. Frankl reports the following episode from the artist’s stay in Constantinople in his 1889 biography “Friedrich von Amerling. Ein Lebensbild”: “In order to recover a little from his state of ‘frenzied stupor’, he persuaded an elderly Turk with a magnificently shaped head, who was nudging his donkey forward, to sit for a portrait. The man acquiesced, not without reservations, in exchange for a handsome baksheesh. When Amerling had finished his portrait a few hours later, he invited poor Hamal to take a look at it. The man cried out and fled, probably out of fear of having sinned against the Qu’ran – for it prohibits the depiction of human figures, stating that painters are challenged to breathe life into their creations and threatened with punishment on the Day of Judgment.” (p. 84). After much waiting, Amerling probably ran out of patience and returned to Vienna unfulfilled – but with extremely interesting impressions and experiences from his journey. The special character of the present work derives from its proven origin in Constantinople, as the artist himself noted in his signature.