Harika (Sazi Sirel) Lifij; On Her Personality as an Artist and Her Paintings

Abstract

Harika Lifij (Sazi Sirel Lifij) got her education during the Second Constitutional Era (1908). This was a time when the political structure in the Ottoman Empire changed and women became visible and gradually started participating in the public sphere. The process that started with the constitutional monarchy is important in that women could get an education in the field of painting. And Harika got her first painting lessons from Wide Kadri. Harika is one of the two female artists chosen for the 1918 Exhibition of Vienna. The Vienna Exhibition was notable in terms of being the first one opened by Turkish painters in Europe. As a female artist, the fact that Harika's paintings were chosen for the exhibition is important for her art and career. She generally painted landscapes, self-portraits and mythological scenes. She painted landscapes and made pochades. In these paintings the colours are subtler and they have a poetic expression. Since she did not date her paintings in general, the chronology is based on the locations she mentioned in her diary and the colours she used. The artist, who carried on painting until 1957, was not as keen on protecting her own paintings as she was on protecting Avni Lifij's. Approximately 50 of her works are extant and they are either in family or private collections. Like the Fatih Mosque/Ramadan Night painting that we attributed to her during this study, other works of hers might show up in the course of time. In this work, the paintings of Harika Lifij and the reviews of the exhibitions that she participated in are studied so as to define her place in that era.