Halil Serif Pasha

Halil Serif Pasha

Halil Serif Pasha , also known as Khalil Bey or Halil Bey (* 1831 in Egypt ; † January 12, 1879 ), was an Ottoman diplomat and art collector. Théophile Gautier described him as the first Muslim with an art collection in the western sense.

biography

Born in Egypt, he was the Ottoman Ambassador to Saint Petersburg . He first moved to Paris as a privateer and was introduced to Gustave Courbet by Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve . After selling his collection in 1868, Halil Şerif Pascha was ambassador to the Ottoman Embassy in Vienna between August 1870 and September 1872 , and later also for a short time in Paris.

collection

• The origin of the world of Courbet, the picture that is the epitome of the art scandal , was commissioned by Khalil-Bey and is now in the Musée d'Orsay.
• Courbet's sleep , also ordered by Khalil-Bey, is today in the Petit Palais Museum in Paris.
• The Turkish bath by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , Paris, Louvre
• The Chestnut Avenue by Théodore Rousseau , Paris, Louvre

literature

• Roderic H. Davison: Halil Şerif Paşa, Ottoman Diplomat and Statesman. In: Osmanlı Araştırmaları, Volume 2 (1981), pp. 203-221, online (PDF, 975 kB).
• Roderic H. Davison: Halil Şerif Paşa: The Influence of Paris and the West on an Ottoman Diplomat. In: Osmanlı Araştırmaları, Volume 6 (1986), pp. 47-65, online (PDF, 2.99 MB).
• Francis Haskell : Un Turc et ses tableaux dans le Paris du XIX ° siècle, essai n ° 12 du livre De l'art et du goût jadis et naguère , Paris, Gallimard, 1989.

predecessor	Office	successor
	Ottoman ambassador to Russia 1856–1858
Rıza Paşa	Ottoman envoy to Greece 1858–1860	Yanko Fotiadis Paşa
İbrahim Haydar Efendi	Ottoman ambassador to Austria-Hungary 1870–1872	Aarifi Pasha
Mehmed Sadık Paşa	Ottoman ambassador to France 1877–1877	Aarifi Pasha