Pierre Désiré Guillemet 1827-1878

Pierre-Désiré Guillemet was born in Lyon on 29 March 1827.
Little is known about his early years other than that he was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon [School of Fine Arts of Lyon] from 1844 to 1847 and that he was taught by the painter Hippolyte Flandrin (Lyon 1809 - Rome 1864).
From 1857 to 1863, he regularly exhibited portraits and historical subjects at the Paris Salon, such as ""The Empress Eugenie"" now in the Musée d'Orsay, and ""The Victory of Magenta Announced to the Regency Council"" now in the Château of Compiègne.
In 1860, together with Eugène Ronjat (1822-?) he made a copy of the ""Raft of the Medusa"" by Théodore Géricault, now in the Musée de Picardie in Amiens.
He also made many reproductions of the portraits of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie.
At that time French painting was famous abroad. His reputation as a ceremonial painter reached abroad and in March 1865 Sultan Abdül Aziz (1830-1876) summoned him to Constantinople (Istanbul) to paint his portrait.
Delighted with the result, Abdül Aziz offered him the position as painter of the Palace. Pierre Désiré Guillemet accepted without hesitation, arranged for his wife to come, and the same year, in 1865, the couple settled in Constantinople. He was then 38 years old and his future was now to be with the Sultan as the official court painter of the Ottoman Empire.
A few years later in 1873, with his wife, he organized the first exhibition of a Turkish painter, Seker Ahmed Pacha.
The following year he opened an Academy of Painting and Drawing on Kalyonçu Kullu Street in Pera (today Beyoglu), the European quarter on the north bank of the Golden Horn. This was the first private school founded in the Ottoman capital and dedicated to the art of painting. Pierre Désiré and his wife taught painting, watercolour and pastel in the ""western style"" which was very fashionable at the time.
This academy soon gained recognition from many artists and enjoyed the support of Sultan Abdül Aziz who, exceptionally, authorised Pierre Désiré Guillemet to paint the women in his harem.
In June 1876 the students exhibited their work for the first time.
Abdül Aziz died in 1876 and it was Pierre Désiré Guillemet who inaugurated the Imperial School of Art (Mektebi y Sanayi-i Chahane) in November 1877, becoming its director. Unfortunately, we have little information about this school because the paintings and documents were destroyed in a fire.
Fate, however, did not leave Pierre Désiré Guillemet much time to enjoy his position as director. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, while trying to help the wounded and the refugees who flocked to Contantinople, he contracted typhoid fever. Exhausted, he died at the age of 51 in this capital that had adopted him thirteen years earlier. He is buried in the Catholic cemetery of Feriköy in Istanbul.
His brief passage left its mark.
A few years later his example was followed by Osman Hamid Bey (1842-1910) the son of Grand Vizier Edhem Pasha.
Osman Hamid Bey had been taught in Paris by Jean-Léon Gérome (1824-1904) at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and by Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888) at the Académie Julian and in 1883, he founded the Ecole des Beaux Arts of Constantinople (Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi).
Together with Osman Hamid Bey, Pierre Désiré Guillemet will be remembered as one of the founders of the first art schools in Turkey.
The few paintings he made in Constantinople were the first authentic testimony of an oriental setting which had actually been lived in, without embellishment, far from the exotic and picturesque representations of the academic painters of that time.
Some of his works are still kept in the Pera Museum in Istanbul.

Frédéric Fringhian