Orientalist School, Attributed To émile Willaey (1880-1963)

Orientalist School
Attributed to Émile Willaey (1880-1963)

Title View of Istanbul – Golden Horn and Süleymaniye Mosque
Date 1910

Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 50 × 89 cm (canvas)

Signature Lower right: “E. Willaey” (green paint) followed by “1910”

Provenance Private collection, France

Bathed in the dazzling light of an eastern sky, this canvas presents the Süleymaniye Mosque rising above the Golden Horn, an emblematic panorama of Istanbul. Lively brushwork—bluish reflections on the water, golden ochres on the architecture, deep greens in the foreground—extends the orientalist tradition while adopting the freer palette that emerged after 1900.

The signature most likely refers to Émile Willaey, an architect trained at the École des Beaux‐Arts and the author of Art-Nouveau buildings in Vincennes; his interest in the precise rendering of monuments and the picturesque atmosphere of the Orient is fully expressed here.

By 1910 the Orient-Express, linking Paris to Constantinople since 1889, made study trips remarkably convenient; many artists and architects used this route to sketch Istanbul’s vistas firsthand. Nonetheless, Willaey may equally have worked from photographs or contemporary artworks—a common practice among orientalist painters.

Dated 1910, the work belongs to the last flourish of orientalism, just before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and attests to Istanbul’s enduring appeal for French creatives at the dawn of the twentieth century.