Nude

Hasan Vecihi Bereketoğlu was born in Cairo and completed his primary and secondary education in Rhodes. He then settled in Istanbul, where he studied at the Faculty of Law. He received his first art lessons from Halil Paşa, and as his interest in art increased he eventually abandoned his law career to study art. In 1922 he went to Paris and in 1923 enrolled at the Julian Academy, where he attended the studio of Paul-Albert Laurens. After returning to Turkey he was appointed Director of Fine Arts at the Community Centres. In 1943 he settled in Ankara, where he spent seven years serving as director of the Presidential Office. He went on to become an administrator of the Association of Fine Arts, a post he held until 1968.

The Ottoman Society of Painters was established in 1909 by artists including Ruhi Arel, Sami Yetik, Şevket Dağ, Hikmet Onat and İbrahim Çallı, under the patronage of the last Ottoman caliph, Prince Abdülmecid Efendi (1868-1944), who was himself a painter. The society was an independent body that came into being in the new liberal atmosphere following the proclamation of the Second Constitution in 1908. It was dedicated to spreading interest in art and awareness of painting as a profession in Ottoman society. From 1916 onwards the society organized the Galatasaray Exhibitions, which became the showcase for new developments in the art world and principally featured works by the young artists known as the 1914 Generation, who had returned after studying at the Julian Academy in Paris. In 1921 the society was renamed the Turkish Society of Painters, and later changed its name twice, to the Association of Turkish Fine Arts in 1926 and finally to the Association of Fine Arts. In the 1940s, however, the society went into decline and lost its influential status in the Turkish art world.

Hasan Vecihi Bereketoğlu was one of the young Ottoman artists who went to Europe to study art in 1909-1910—principally at the Julian Academy in Paris—but were obliged to return home at the outbreak of the First World War and so became known as the '1914 Generation'. As well as İbrahim Çallı, the group included leading painters like Nazmi Ziya, Avni Lifij, Feyhaman Duran, Namık İsmail and Hikmet Onat, who played an important part in the spread of such genres as landscape and still life in Turkish painting. A striking aspect of their work is the way their paintings reflect their own impressions and personal interpretations. Owing to their pure colours and sensitivity to light, these painters are sometimes described as the Turkish Impressionists. Almost all of them were among the first Turkish teachers at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul and so were active in training the next generations of Turkish artists.