Şeker Ahmed Paşa
1841–1907 · Ottoman
Other spellings: Ahmed Ali Paşa · Ahmet Ali Paşa · Chekere Ahmed · Seker Ahmed Pasa · Sheker Ahmed Pasha
The painter who established landscape as an independent genre in Turkish art. He studied in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme, and continued to paint alongside his court duties after returning. The exhibition he organised in Istanbul in 1873 is considered the first public art exhibition in the Ottoman Empire. His forest interiors and still lifes show a painter who put observation ahead of academic formula.