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A four-panel work by Ottoman and early Republican-era painter Halil Pasha sold for around $725,760 (£537,600) at a Sotheby’s auction, setting a new sales record for the artist.
The 1912 paintings, which depict the four seasons, had been estimated at roughly $269,600 to $404,400 before the sale.
The final price exceeded expectations and marked the highest auction result recorded for Halil Pasha, according to information cited by Anadolu Agency and Daily Sabah.
The work was included in Sotheby’s “Orientalist Art” auction, which focuses on 19th and early 20th-century works connected to North Africa, Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, and the Ottoman world.
The sale points to continuing international interest in Halil Pasha’s paintings within the global art market.
An earlier version of the same composition, dated to the early 1900s, is currently on display at the Pera Museum in Istanbul.
The exhibition, titled “By the Water: The Life and Art of Halil Pasha,” is organized under the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation and brings together the artist’s paintings with archival documents, photographs, and sketchbooks.
The show examines Halil Pasha’s work across Istanbul, Paris, and Egypt, focusing on his portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, while also tracing his relationship with light and nature.
Visitors to the Pera Museum exhibition can also see works from different periods of the artist’s career, including “The Cavalryman,” a painting that was previously part of the Versace Collection and was also sold at Sotheby’s.
Halil Pasha is regarded as one of the significant painters of the transition period from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, with a body of work shaped by Western academic techniques, landscape painting, and the visual culture of his time.
“By the Water: The Life and Art of Halil Pasha” will remain open at Pera Museum until Aug. 23.
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