Sotheby’S Turkish And Islamic Week

Sotheby’s Turkish and Islamic Week: Classical to Contemporary concluded on Friday. The week’s total sales of Orientalist paintings, Islamic & Ottoman art and Contemporary Turkish art achieved roughly 26 million USD. 

The top-selling painting was Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky’s “View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus” which sold for 5.2million USD, seriously exceeding the pre-sale estimate of 1.8million, setting the artist’s new record. The buyer is an anonymous one who bought the painting on the phone.

Aivazovsky first visited Istanbul in 1845 upon the invitation of Sultan Abdülmecid I. He was commissioned for a number of paintings as a court painter by the Ottoman Sultans Abdülmecid, Abdülaziz and Abdülhamid. Today, 30 of these paintings are on display in the Dolmabahçe Palace and other museums in Turkey.

Aivazovsky died in 1900, leaving about 6000 paintings behind him.