Nazlı Ecevit

Biography

In 1922 the graduating examinations at the Fine Arts School for Girls in Istanbul were cancelled because the Turkish War of Independence was under way. Instead of a diploma Nazlı Ecevit received a teaching certificate, and that document shaped the next quarter of a century of her life.

Fatma Nazlı was born on 4 January 1900 in Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Her father, Colonel Emin Sargut, came from a military family; her maternal grandfather, Kirat Pasha, was an aide to the sultan. The family was of Bosniak origin. In 1915 she graduated from the Çapa Teacher’s School for Girls (Çapa İnas Dar-ül muallimat). One of the first Turkish women painters, Mihri Müşfik, advised her to take up painting, and the same year Nazlı entered the Fine Arts School for Girls (İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi). She studied there for seven years; her teachers included Ömer Adil, and she also worked in the studio of Feyhaman Duran. As a student she painted portraits and nudes and showed her work at the Galatasaray exhibitions. The “Portrait of Keriman Hanım”, dated 1922, is now in the Istanbul State Art and Sculpture Museum.

Then came the teaching years. She first taught drawing at Beşiktaş Junior High School for Girls, then followed her parents to Kastamonu in Anatolia and taught there, later in Bolu and İzmit. Painting had to wait.

In 1924 she married and moved to Ankara, and the following year she gave birth to a son, Bülent, who would become a political party leader and four times prime minister. In Ankara she taught drawing at the Ankara Teachers’ School of Music, the forerunner of the Ankara State Conservatory at Hacettepe University, and also at a junior high school in Istanbul. Her teaching career lasted nineteen years. The exact years she spent at each school are hard to establish from the material available, so I do not give them.

In 1947 Ecevit returned to painting. She again took part in group exhibitions and also held solo shows. From 1948 to 1975 her works were displayed almost every year at the State Art and Sculpture Exhibition. She belonged to the Fine Arts Union, for some time served as its chairperson, and it was there that her manner took shape, combining realism with impressionism. Her style is compared to that of painters of the 1930s generation: İbrahim Çallı, Şeref Akdik, Ali Karsan and Adil Doğançay. Her impressionism is said to have come from the tradition of Turkey’s military painters.

After 1947 she painted mostly landscapes and still lifes: Salacak, the Bosphorus, Bursa. To a soft, colourful impressionist sensibility she added a sober, realist look at local life. She worked in oils, watercolours, crayon and charcoal. Among her known titles are “Flowers”, “View from Çamlıca”, “Landscape with Balcony”, “Maiden’s Tower at Salacak” and “Bosphorus” (1954). In 1975, at the age of seventy-five, she received a medal from the Directorate of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

In 2003 Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after taking office and refurbishing the interior, had her painting “Salacak” hung in the lobby of his official residence.

Nazlı Ecevit died on 14 August 1985 in Ankara, in the Hacettepe University hospital, where her son lived. She was buried at Cebeci Asri Cemetery; the funeral service was held at the Hacı Bayram Mosque.