Turkish, 19th–20th century, male.
Born 29 May 1868, in Constantinople (now Istanbul); died 23 August 1944, in Paris.
Painter and collector. Portraits, genre scenes, landscapes.
Abdul-Medjid was the son of Sultan Abdülaziz, and later Crown Prince of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph. He was taught painting by Fausto Zonaro, an Italian artist who worked in the Ottoman court ...
(b. Oakland, CA, 1893; d. Shiraz, Iran, 25 Jan. 1977).
American historian of Iranian art. While studying mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, Ackerman met and eventually married Arthur Upham Pope, with whom she had taken courses in philosophy and aesthetics. In 1926 she and Pope organized the first ever exhibition of Persian art at the Pennsylvania Museum and helped create the First International Congress of Oriental Art. In 1930 Ackerman was stricken with polio but taught herself to walk again. They were instrumental in preparing the 1931 Persian Art Exhibition at Burlington House, London, and the Second International Congress of Iranian Art and Archaeology, as well as the Third Congress in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1935 and the exhibition of Iranian art at the Iranian Institute in New York in 1940. She visited Iran for the first time in 1964, when the shah of Iran invited Pope to revive the Asia Institute; it was associated with Pahlavi University in Shiraz until ...
[‛Alawī; Filālī]
Islamic dynasty and rulers of Morocco since 1631. Like their predecessors the Sa‛dis, the ‛Alawis are sharīfs (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad), and both dynasties are sometimes classed together as the ‘Sharifs of Morocco’. From a base in the Tafilalt region of south-east Morocco, the ‛Alawi family was able to overcome the centrifugal forces exerted by the Berber tribes who had destroyed the Sa‛di state in the first half of the 17th century. To restore political authority and territorial integrity, Mawlay Isma‛il (reg 1672–1727) added a new black slave corps to the traditional tribal army. Although royal power was weak during the 19th century and the early 20th, when the French and Spanish established protectorates, the ‛Alawis’ power was fully restored after independence from the French in 1956.
‛Alawi building activities (see Islamic art, §II, 7(v)) were concentrated in the four cities that have served as their capitals: Fez and Marrakesh at various times from ...
[‛Alī Wijdān; Wijdan]
(b Baghdad, Aug 29, 1939).
Jordanian painter and art patron. She studied history at Beirut University College (formerly Beirut College for Women), receiving a BA in 1961. In 1993 she took a PhD in Islamic Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. After serving in the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and representing her country at United Nations meetings in Geneva and New York, Ali founded the Royal Society of Fine Arts in Jordan in 1979 and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in 1980 (see Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of). In 1988 she organized in Amman the Third International Seminar on Islamic Art, entitled ‘Problems of Art Education in the Islamic World’, and in 1989 she organized the exhibition Contemporary Art from the Islamic World at the Barbican Centre, London. In 2001 she founded the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Jordan, and has received numerous awards in recognition of her work in the arts....
In the 20th century, discussion of the relationship between Byzantine art and the art of the Latin West evolved in tandem with scholarship on Byzantine art itself. Identified as the religious imagery and visual and material culture of the Greek Orthodox Empire based at Constantinople between
(b Istanbul, March 23, 1869; d Lisbon, July 20, 1955).
Iranian oil magnate and collector of Armenian descent. He studied at King’s College, London, where he gained a diploma in engineering in 1887. He then embarked on travels that led to the publication of La Transcaucasie et la Péninsule d’Apcheron—Souvenirs de voyage (Paris, 1891), a work that showed his considerable interest in economics and his passion for art, which were also apparent in his diaries and letters. He was a pioneer in the development of the Middle Eastern oil fields as an energy source, and from the end of the 19th century he was closely involved in the growth of the oil industry, beginning with the formation of Royal Dutch Shell and the Turkish Petroleum Co. The income derived from these sources enabled him to become a collector of art. In 1902 he became a British citizen and in 1926 Persian.
Gulbenkian was a true connoisseur, highly knowledgeable and perceptive, and carried out extensive research in his own library and in museums before acquiring a work. The collection he formed is considered one of the most remarkable made in the 20th century. It comprises European paintings, Italian medals and coins, Egyptian sculpture, Islamic, Persian and Indian art, East Asian ceramics, illuminated manuscripts, book bindings, French furniture, sculpture, bronzes, silver, textiles, Roman glass, Greek coins and jewellery. The only contemporary artist he commissioned was ...
(b Stockholm, Nov 11, 1882; reg 1950–73; d Hälsingborg, Sept 15, 1973).
Swedish ruler, collector and archaeologist. He was educated at Uppsala University, where he studied history, Nordic archaeology and Egyptology, and in his youth assisted in archaeological expeditions in Sweden, Greece, Italy and Cyprus. In 1907 he began to collect Chinese art and was soon attracted to the early periods, the area in which his collection eventually became pre-eminent. In 1908 he met the foremost scholars and collectors of Chinese art in London and then helped to plan a large exhibition of Chinese art at the Kungliga Akademien för de Fria Konsterna (Royal Academy of Fine Arts), Stockholm, in 1914. The following year he met Erik Nyström, Professor of natural history at Taiyuan University, who purchased items for him in China. His collection was also enriched from 1916 with the help of Orvar Karlbeck, the Swedish railway engineer active in China. Other Chinese pieces were purchased or presented to his collection during his journey to East Asia in ...
(Andrew)
(b Cairo, Oct 28, 1892; d London, May 26, 1969).
Merchant banker and collector. He was the elder son of Sir Victor Harari Pasha, a leading member of the Anglo-Jewish community in Egypt, and was educated at Lausanne and Pembroke College, Cambridge. On returning to Egypt, he became a junior officer in the Palestine campaign of Edmund Allenby and then finance officer to Ronalds Storrs, the military governor of Jerusalem. In 1920 he served under Herbert Samuel as director of the Department of Commerce and Trade in the British Mandate, but returned to Egypt in 1925 to help in the family business. With the outbreak of World War II, he became economic adviser to GHQ Middle East, and then served under Peter Ritchie-Calder, the director of plans in the Department of Political Warfare in London. After the war, he stayed in London as managing director of the merchant bank S. Japhet & Co., and when it was taken over he joined the board of the Charterhouse group. From the 1920s he was interested in Islamic metalwork, becoming an authority on the subject and contributing a chapter to the ...
(b Kayseri, Turkey, 1872; d 1962).
Archaeologist, collector and dealer of Armenian descent. He excavated in Iran at Sultanabad from 1903 and the medieval city of Rayy from c. 1907 and assembled an outstanding collection of Oriental art, especially Islamic and Persian. He exhibited Islamic ceramics in London in 1911 and works excavated under his supervision were shown in New York in 1914. Major sales of Islamic pieces from his collection, including lacquer doors and tile panels from Isfahan, books and paintings, carpets and ceramics, were held in the 1920s at the Anderson Gallery, New York. In 1929 he acquired at auction the Mughal album of calligraphy and painting that became known as the Kevorkian Album (now divided New York, Met., 55.121.10; Washington, DC, Freer; see also Indian sub-continent, §V, 4(i)(d)). His gifts to museums and universities included Assyrian reliefs to the Brooklyn Museum, New York. His desire to promote American interest in Middle Eastern art and archaeology was continued through the Hagop Kevorkian Fund....
[Karl Anton Leo Ludwig]
(b Vienna, Nov 4, 1848; d Vienna, July 15, 1933).
Polish archaeologist, writer, collector and patron, active in Austria. As an archaeologist his main interest lay in the architectural ruins of the late Roman Empire in Anatolia. In 1884 he organized an expedition of which he later published an account, Stadt Pamphyliens und Pisidiens. Sketches made by Jacek Malczewski (e.g. Warsaw, Royal Castle; mainly watercolours) are also records of the expedition. Lanckoroński and Malczewski later toured Italy and travelled to Munich together. Other artists patronized by Lanckoroński included Antoni Madeyski (1862–1939), Henryk Rodakowski and Hans Makart. During 1888 and 1889 Lanckoroński made a round-the-world voyage and subsequently published a diary of this trip, entitled Rund um die Erde. He brought back to Vienna various works of art, mainly sculptures and textiles. Between 1890 and 1895 a Baroque Revival palace was built for him in Vienna to designs by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Hellmer (1849–1919). In it Lanckoroński installed paintings, mainly Dutch and French, that he had inherited and Italian paintings he had purchased (e.g. Masaccio’s ...
[tribal art]
The market for ‘tribal art’ emerged in the first decades of the 20th century. By way of avant-garde artists and pioneering dealers, African and Oceanic art slowly became accepted as ‘art’—with its inclusion in the Musée du Louvre in Paris in 2000 as a decisive endorsement. Initially, it was referred to as ‘primitive art’—alluding to an early ‘primitive’ stage in human development; later replaced by the equally biased ‘tribal art’. While still used widely among dealers and collectors (for want of a better word and being conveniently short), the term ‘tribe’, or its derivative ‘tribal’, is frowned upon by the scholarly community.
The foundations of the tribal art market were laid at the turn of the 20th century. European powers colonized large overseas territories in both Africa and Oceania and, along with other commodities, there arrived ethnographic artefacts. Europeans had conducted coastal trade with many African regions over centuries, but systematic explorations of the continental hinterland did sometimes not take place until the first decades of the 20th century. These resulted in the discovery of previously unknown cultures whose ritual objects, such as masks, were displayed during world’s fairs and colonial exhibitions. Many of these objects ended up in newly established museums, such as the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, outside Brussels. Vigorous competitors in the collection of ethnographic objects in both Africa and Oceania, these museums became the leading players in the early phases of the tribal art market’s development. Next to these large-scale official collecting activities, colonial, military, or missionary personnel also brought home exotic objects....
[Qājār; Kadjar]
Turkoman dynasty of rulers and patrons. They reigned in Iran from 1779 to 1924. After the fall of the Safavid family dynasty and the campaigns of Nadir Shah (d 1747), the Qajar tribe of Turkoman competed against the Zand dynasty for power in Iran. Under Agha Muhammad Khan (d 1797) the various branches of the Qajar tribe were united, and their authority expanded over the country. In 1785 Agha Muhammad took Tehran and adopted it as capital. In 1794 he captured the last Zand ruler Lutf ‛Ali (reg 1789–94) at Kirman, and the following year he was formally crowned in Tehran. With the country pacified, subsequent Qajar rulers in the 19th century, particularly Agha Muhammad’s nephew (1) Fath ‛Ali Shah and the latter’s great-grandson (2) Nasir al-Din, became important patrons of art and architecture at a time when Iran was increasingly exposed to European ideas. By the end of the 19th century, however, the country was deeply in foreign debt due to incessant warfare and royal extravagance. A demand for political liberalism arose, and in ...
Term for the return of lost or looted cultural objects to their country of origin, former owners, or their heirs. The loss of the object may happen in a variety of contexts (armed conflicts, war, colonialism, imperialism, or genocide), and the nature of the looted cultural objects may also vary, ranging from artworks, such as paintings and sculptures, to human remains, books, manuscripts, and religious artefacts. An essential part of the process of restitution is the seemingly unavoidable conflict around the transfer of the objects in question from the current to the former owners. Ownership disputes of this nature raise legal, ethical, and diplomatic issues. The heightened tensions in the process arise because the looting of cultural objects challenges, if not breaks down, relationships between peoples, territories, cultures, and heritages.
The history of plundering and art imperialism may be traced back to ancient times. Looting has been documented in many instances from the sack by the Romans of the Etruscan city of Veii in ...
(b Berlin, June 22, 1865; d Neubabelsberg, June 1945).
German archaeologist, art historian and collector. He travelled to the Middle East and met Carl Humann, who was excavating Pergamon and advised Sarre to study the monuments of medieval Anatolia. In 1895 he visited Phrygia, Lycaonia and Pisidia and in 1896 went on a longer journey in Asia Minor. His principal aim was to discover architectural monuments and archaeological sites; he always travelled with a trained architect and became a talented photographer. He also collected epigraphic material which he sent to such Arabists as Bernhard Moritz, Eugen Mittwoch and Max van Berchem. In the years 1897 to 1900 Sarre travelled to Iran. Objects from his collection were exhibited in Berlin (1899) and at the Exposition des arts musulmans (Paris, 1903). In 1905 he met Ernst Herzfeld, and in 1907–8 they travelled together from Istanbul via Aleppo and Baghdad to the Gulf to find an Islamic site suitable for excavation. Their choice, which Herzfeld later described as Sarre’s, fell upon ...
[Āl Sa‛ūd]
Dynasty that has ruled most of the Arabian peninsula since 1746. The foundations of Saudi rule were laid when Muhammad ibn Sa‛ud (reg 1746–65) formed an alliance with the theologian Muhammad ibn ‛Abd al-Wahhab (d 1791), who wanted to purify Islam in Arabia. Under ‛Abd al-‛Aziz I (reg 1765–1803) Riyadh and most of the Najd region came under Saudi rule, and the Hijaz region, including Mecca and Medina, soon followed. Saudi expansion was countered when the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II (reg 1808–39) commissioned his viceroy in Egypt, Muhammad ‛Ali (reg 1805–48), to reconquer the Hijaz and Najd. After the withdrawal of Turco-Egyptian forces, Riyadh was recaptured by Turki (reg 1823–34) and became the new capital of a reduced ‘second’ Saudi state. After the death of Faysal I (reg 1834–65 with interruption), Saudi fortunes began to wane, and by 1891 the ‘second’ Saudi state had come to an end. ‛Abd al-‛Aziz II (...
(b Abadan, May 15, 1943).
Iranian photographer, curator, and art dealer, active in the USA. Shafrazi introduced graffiti to the mainstream art market and contributed to the contemporary art boom of the 1980s. Raised in Abadan, a small port town that experienced an oil boom in the post-war years, Shafrazi was fascinated by Western popular culture and art. He moved to England in 1956 and three years later began formal art study at Hammersmith College of Art and Building, before continuing at the Royal College of Art, where he graduated in 1967. Following college, Shafrazi pursued a career as an artist while also teaching, first at the Manchester College of Art then at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1969.
A newfound interest in political activism shifted his creative focus from art objects to art actions. His involvement with the latter culminated in an infamous incident that took place on 28 February 1974...
(b Tehran, 1937).
Iranian sculptor, painter, art historian and collector. He studied sculpture at the College of Fine Arts at Tehran University, graduating in 1956, and then attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara (1956–7) and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan (1958–9), where he worked under Marino Marini. In 1960 he began to teach at the College of Decorative Arts in Tehran, and in 1961 he was invited to the Minneapolis College of Arts and Design as a visiting artist, where he taught sculpture until 1963. In 1964 he returned to Tehran to teach sculpture at the College of Fine Arts. Primarily a sculptor, he worked with a range of materials, including bronze, copper, brass, scrap metal and clay. In the 1960s he contributed to the art movement in Iran known as Saqqakhana, and he made sculptures that were reminiscent of religious shrines and objects. Pairs of figures and fantastic birds were also common subjects. Themes from classical Persian literature also influenced him. He frequently rendered the word ...
(Said)
(b Aka, Turkey, 1865; d Tiranë, Feb 11, 1918).
Albanian sculptor, collector and poet of Turkish birth. His family was in exile in Turkey, and he began his studies in the school of Madame Fyres (1878), finishing them in the Sultanie Lycée of Galatasaray in Istanbul (1894). Toptani’s artistic work is intrinsically linked to his efforts in the struggle for Albanian independence. Works such as the bust of ...
