Hamdi Bey Painting Sells for £1M
A long-lost painting by 19th-century Ottoman artist Osman Hamdi Bey sold for £1 million ($1.3 million) at a London auction on Tuesday, becoming the top lot of the event, CE Report quotes Anadolu Agency
Titled Preparing Coffee (1881), the painting had been unseen for over a century, known only from a black-and-white photo. It reemerged from a private Austrian collection and was acquired by an anonymous phone bidder.
The richly detailed scene, imagined within an Ottoman palace setting, shows two women preparing coffee—a fictional moment rendered with exquisite precision.
Hamdi Bey, trained in Paris and renowned for blending Western techniques with Eastern subjects, remains one of the most respected figures in Ottoman art.
