Hikmet Onat, 1882-1977

Hikmet Onat graduated from the Heybeliada Naval School in 1903 and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in 1905. One of the founders of the Society of Ottoman Painters, Hikmet Onat’s work ranged from battle scenes produced at the Şişli Atelier that was opened with the backing of war minister Enver Paşa in 1917 to academic-style nudes and interiors. The artist also produced landscapes and hence focused on Istanbul. Like other artists of the “1914 Generation”, Onat was also an adherent of Impressionism, which qualified as “anti-academic” at the time. In case of his landscapes, however, whose formal language remained unchanged for years, he hovered somewhere between Impressionism and Academism throughout his life, producing works that documented the landscape of the Bosphorus. Nevertheless, a strong element of Academism is found in his other works.

For years, Hikmet Onat adhered to a rather military-like weekly work schedule. This involved getting up and setting out to that day’s destination before dawn, so that he could capture the first glimmers of light. He set his impressions down in sketchbooks that he used to design his scenes, making at times detailed notes of decisions about layouts, colors, and so on long before he actually began work on a painting. In “Morning at Toygartepe”, we can see evidence of the artist’s characteristic brushwork technique (from which he deviated very little) and of his non-stop process of creation involving a palette always kept wet.