Yervant Oskan (1855-1914)

During the years when Fine Arts Academy of Istanbul opened in 1883, the only sculptor in the country was Yervant Oskan , who had returned after being educated in Rome.The sculptor Yervant Oskan was one of the instrumental founders of the School. While the reading is interesting, there is no reference to the role and the ratio of non-Turkish students in the Imperial School.The earliest three-dimensional sculptures of the human figure on Turkish art ( in Western norms )appeared after the foundation of the Academy, which soon became the most important center for the plastic arts in Turkey, an institution of repute in which culture and the arts flourished from the late Ottoman Empire into the Turkish Republic.

Portrait of Naile Hanim

Yervant Oskan and his pupil Ilhan Ôzsoy (1867-1944) were the first instructors in sculpture at the school. Their academic method was based on the instruction they had received in Rome and Paris.Also Yervant Oskan was coauthor with the famous Turkish painter Osman Hamdi Bey of a book about the Tomb of Antiochus and archaeological excavations on Mount Nemrud.

Source
Turcica, Volumes 35-36