‘Lost’ Ottoman Masterpiece Is Set to be Auctioned

(MENAFN) This spring, the art world’s attention is focused on London, where one of the most remarkable rediscoveries in Orientalist art is set to be auctioned at the prestigious Sotheby’s.

On April 29, as part of their eagerly awaited Orientalist Art sale, Sotheby’s will feature Preparing Coffee, a long-lost masterpiece by Osman Hamdi Bey — widely considered one of the most esteemed figures in Ottoman painting.

The artwork, created in 1881, has emerged after more than a century spent in private European collections, with its existence previously only known through a black-and-white photograph taken in the same year by famous photographers Pascal Sebah and Policarpe Joaillier.

Valued at EURO1-1.5 million (approximately USD1.3-2 million), Preparing Coffee has astonished art experts and collectors alike with its rediscovery. "This was a very unexpected rediscovery," shares Claude Piening, senior international specialist for European paintings at Sotheby’s.

Piening continues, "I was approached by a gentleman whom I've known for many years, who proposed this picture to me. He had recently bought it from someone else who had acquired it a few years ago, from the family — the European family — in whose possession it had been for almost 75 years, certainly since around 1930."

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