Turkish Ottoman Figure Painting with Suzanne Compagnon

Art Informant

In today’s episode, Isabelle Imbert welcomes Dr Suzanne Compagnon, post-doctoral fellow at the university of Utrecht. Suzanne recently got her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna with a thesis focused on Turkish Ottoman painting, and more specifically on the single-page figures produced by the painters Levni and Bukhari in the first quarter of the 18th century. Ottoman painting in general has not been studied as much as its Persian and Indian counterparts, and Suzanne dived into the topic with passion. In the episode, they talk about the career and work of these two painters, their sources of inspiration, powdered wigs, bonnets, and much more.
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Mentioned in the Episode and Further Links

• Follow the Art Informant on Instagram and X
• Follow Suzanne on Academia
• Read Suzanne's Ph.D. dissertation online (open access)
• Esin Atil, Levni and the Surname: the Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Festival, University of Washington Press, 2000.
  • Review of the book and reproductions of paintings on Istanbul traveloguewebsite (2014)
• Gwendolyn Collaço, "‘Word-Seizing’ Albums: Imported Paintings from ʿAcem and Hindūstān on an Eclectic Ottoman Market", Ars Orientalis, 51 (2021), pp. 133-187 (open access on Academia)
• Album Arabe 6076, Bibliotheque nationale de France (digitised)
• Album Arabe 6077, Bibliotheque nationale de France (digitised)
• Click here for more episodes of the ART Informant.

Click here to see the reproductions of artefacts discussed in the episode.