Halil Pasha

Biography

Halil received the title of pasha in 1906, and he is still known by it. But it all began at a military school.

He was born in 1857 in the Beylerbeyi district of Istanbul. His family came from Rhodes, and his father, Selim Pasha, was a soldier and one of the founders of the Turkish Military Academy. Halil studied at the Military School of Engineering (Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümâyûn), from which the Istanbul Technical University later developed; according to some accounts, he completed the course in 1873. Graduates were usually appointed to teach at military schools, and he too began teaching drawing, but he wanted to continue his study of painting in Europe. His father long refused; according to some accounts, he gave his consent in 1880. Halil went to Paris and for about eight years worked in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a painter of Oriental subjects. In 1889 a work of his won a medal at an exhibition in Paris. Sources describe it differently: according to some, it was a bronze medal of the Salon for the painting “Madame X” (“Woman with Gloves”), according to others, the award was made at the Exposition Universelle. This picture is assigned to his early period, when he kept to an academic and realist style: portraits, still lifes, battle scenes, landscapes, the gateways of caravanserais.

On his return he nevertheless became a teacher at a military school. In 1906, on being appointed to the Harbiye (the military academy), he was granted the title of pasha. Two years later, after the proclamation of the constitution, he left the service with the rank of colonel (according to some accounts, he was demoted to colonel under a new law) and turned to painting and private lessons. Later he gave lessons at various schools. Among his pupils was Müfide Kadri, the first female art teacher in Turkey.

After 1914, when young Turkish artists came back from Paris because of the war, and became known as the “1914 Generation”, Halil Pasha taught at the School of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi), now the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. In 1917–1918 he was its director. In his mature years his painting changed. He painted the shores of the Bosphorus, the reflections of caiques and waterside mansions on still water, and now did so in the spirit of Impressionism. To my mind, this is the main thing in his biography: in his hands Turkish painting first took up light in earnest. Toward the end of his life he worked more and more in the open air and painted views of Pendik, Bostancı, Erenköy and Çengelköy. In the 1920s, at the invitation of Abbas Hilmi Pasha, the last khedive of Egypt, he visited Egypt. Back in Istanbul, he was a guest for long periods at the khedive’s mansion on the Bosphorus, where he had a studio; the Sakıp Sabancı Museum is there now, and it holds three well-known paintings by Halil Pasha. Turkish writers call him the artist who “brought painting into the Egyptian palaces”.

Halil Pasha died in 1939 (August, according to the preferred data) in Beylerbeyi, in the waterside house where he was born.