Jules Laurens

Private collection, Bavaria

Sale: Auctionata Paddle8 AG, Berlin, 27 September 2016, lot 10

This view east from Küçüksu on the Asian shore is towards the Bosphorus and the imposing ramparts of Rumelı Hisari, the fortress Mehmed the Conqueror built in 1452 in the record time of four months. Laurens was just nineteen when he first visited Constantinople, when in 1846 he was invited by the French geographer Xavier Hommaire de Hell on a government mission to Persia. On 28 June of that year they set sail from Constantinople for Trabzon, on the first leg of what turned out to be an arduous and dangerous journey through Erzurum, Van, and Tabriz to Tehran.