Xavier de Hell

Amasra(Amaserrah). View of the Genoese fortress and port on the Black sea.

In 1835, the geographer and engineer Ignace Hommaire de Hell sailed to Turkey to oversee the construction of a suspension bridge in Constantinople and a lighthouse on the Black Sea coast. Whilst continuing his ethnographical and commercial research, he extensively surveyed the surrounding region, carried out geographical, industrial, and mining surveys for Czar Nicholas I, and supervised mining and road building projects for the prince of Moldavia until illness forced him to return to France in 1842.

Two years later de Hell returned, and in 1847 set off for Persia with the twenty two year old painter Jules Laurens. Anticipating a difficult journey, de Hell sent his wife back to France, and indeed owing to ill health, did not reach Tehran until February 1848. He was authorised by Mohammad Shah Qajar to study the feasibility of a canal from Sahrud to Savojbolaq and spent a month engaged in surveys and archaeological observations, culminating in a study of the Varamin mosque. Returning to Tehran and then setting off for Isfahan that same year, de Hell arrived extremely ill and died two weeks later. de Hell’s papers were returned to his wife who, in collaboration with Laurens and with the support of the French Government, was able to publish his research a few years after his death with Laurens evocative views. Jules Lauren went on to have a prolific career in France as a painter with an emphasis on the ‘Oriental’, a theme largely visited from memory from his great journey with de Hell into the lands little seen by Western eyes.