CONSTANTINOPLE.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Vue prise de la Tour du Séraskiérat ("View taken from the Serasker (or Beyazit) Tower"). A panoramic 360-degree view of the city. Towards the Golden Horn, the Topkapi Palace and the city's great mosques can be seen, including Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Yeni Mosque, and the Süleymaniye. Panoramas of this period usually favour the Galata Tower as a vantage point.The view is unsigned, though likely from the studios of Pascal Sébah and Policarpe Joaillier, or the Swede Guillaume Berggren. Both are renowned for their handsome panoramas of the city. In 1857, Sébah opened one of the first photographic studios in Constantinople. The business was taken over by his son, Jean in 1883, who styled himself J. Pascal Sébah and went on to become a talented photographer in his own right. In 1888, he partnered with Policarpe Joaillier, their firm becoming the official photographers of the Sultan. "From the 1870s, Sébah and Joaillier were major suppliers of evocative imagery to the increasing number of people who undertook the Victorian Grand Tour" (Hannavy, p. 1,261).Berggren moved to Constantinople in 1866 and opened his studio on Grand Rue de Pera in the early 1870s. His oeuvre included studio work, a remarkable series of documentary portraits of working people, and the eternalising of the construction of the Anatolian Railway.

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