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Lot Essay
The Neapolitan artist Achille Formis artist attended Gabriele Smargiassi's (1798-1882) school of landscape painting and, following a series of personal events that led him to settle in Milan, he left for Turkey in 1868.
This depiction of the celebrated Ottoman landscape at Küçüksu (Göksu), on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus near Istanbul, was long favoured by nineteenth-century travellers. The site was renowned for its shaded valleys, streams, and pavilions, where Ottoman sultans and aristocrats picnicked and hunted, and where ornate fountains marked both practical water sources and ceremonial display.
Here Formis shows the structure set amid lush greenery, with boats on the Bosphorus and the Anatolian hills beyond. It symbolises the Romantic vision of Constantinople as a place where nature, empire, and daily life intertwine in a carefully staged pastoral ideal.
The luminosity with which the painting is infused is typical of the meridional painting from which Formis' activity originates.
This depiction of the celebrated Ottoman landscape at Küçüksu (Göksu), on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus near Istanbul, was long favoured by nineteenth-century travellers. The site was renowned for its shaded valleys, streams, and pavilions, where Ottoman sultans and aristocrats picnicked and hunted, and where ornate fountains marked both practical water sources and ceremonial display.
Here Formis shows the structure set amid lush greenery, with boats on the Bosphorus and the Anatolian hills beyond. It symbolises the Romantic vision of Constantinople as a place where nature, empire, and daily life intertwine in a carefully staged pastoral ideal.
The luminosity with which the painting is infused is typical of the meridional painting from which Formis' activity originates.