32 M A R I N I K A BA BA N A Z A R OVA
HOW DOES ONE BECOME
AN ORIENTAL ORIENTALIST?
THE LIFE AND MIND
OF OSMAN HAMDI BEY, 1842–1910
EDHEM ELDEM
O
sman Hamdi’s Orientalism:
Early Interpretations
he question of Osman Hamdi
Bey’s Orientalism goes back to
the immediate aftermath of his
death in 1910. In 1911, the art
critic Adolphe halasso (1858–1919) seems to have
been the irst to pose the question of whether or not
the Ottoman artist could be compared to western
Orientalist painters:
I do not think that any Orientalist has carried further
than Hamdy Bey the truthfulness, variety and science
of decors. his, in my opinion, is the characteristic of
his style. An accumulation of details turns each of his
paintings into a poem of art and life, where the minutest
accessory is as meticulously observed and reproduced as
the main character naming the canvas. Likely scrupu-
lous is his study of those individuals, who are not only
Muslims, but Turks. Everything in Hamdy Bey draws
inspiration from the Turkish Orient. hanks to his art,
he manages to bring speciicity to his works
2. O. Hamdi Bey, Derviche au turbey des enfants,
[he Dervish at the Children’s Tomb], 1908,
oil on canvas, 122 × 92 cm. Museum of Painting and Sculpture,
Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts
33
by placing the action not in an outer setting which
would inevitably remind one of Turkey, but by placing
them in inner settings which belong only to Turkey. By
drawing inspiration from this aesthetic, all his paintings
are essentially Turkish and clearly give the impression of
having been painted by a Turkish artist.1
halasso’s analysis was very political. His main
objective was to demonstrate that Osman Hamdi
was a true Ottoman, even a true Turk, and that it
was of crucial importance that he should not be
confused with western Orientalists. In other words
this comment had less to do with any kind of
artistic considerations than with a desire to deine
Osman Hamdi’s intrinsic “national” qualities.
For purposes of comparison, one could look at
the contemporary comment by the archaeologist
Salomon Reinach (1858–1932), in the obituary he
wrote for his friend and colleague:
Yet he had the soul of an artist and, irst among the
Ottomans, wished to become a painter. His education
took place in Boulanger and Gérôme’s workshops,
whose somewhat soft touch he imitated with elegant
and accurate strokes. Hamdi has painted all his life;
many of his paintings, although not masterpieces,
have been purchased by our government. But Hamdi
34 EDHEM ELDEM
was worth more than his detailed painting; all he
needed was to unleash his natural talent and to paint
with the verve witnessed in his sketches. One day, in
Constantinople, he bet he could paint a full-size and
lifelike portrait of his daughter in less than an hour;
as I protested, he had the model join us, settled at his
easel, and stunned me by confounding my skepticism.
After less than half an hour the portrait was already
true to life and excellent; with two days more of work,
he would have spoilt it.2
Evidently, Reinach was more of an art critic than
halasso. He made no reference to Orientalism,
except for his formation by Gustave Boulanger
(1824–88) and Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904);3
nor did he mention anything about the “national”
character of his art, except to note that he was
the irst Ottoman—in the sense of Muslim—to
practice painting. And yet, in the same obituary,
Reinach did not hesitate to label the same man as “a
Turk at heart, exclusively Turkish” when speaking
of his role at the head of the Imperial Museum and
to quote from one of his departed friend’s letters,
where he described himself as “the oldest of Young
Turks.”4 In other words, while Reinach was cer-
tainly not oblivious to the notion of political and
patriotic allegiances, he simply saw no connection
between these issues and Hamdi’s painting. He
was more concerned with his talent and with the
necessity to situate him within the broader context
of western art, to which he belonged. his was
exactly what French bureaucrats had done, back
in 1893, when they had decided to purchase one
of his paintings in the avowed hope that this lat-
tering move would weigh favorably on the treat-
ment of French archaeologists and excavators in the
Ottoman lands: “Indeed, he is a painter, a former
student of our School of Fine Arts, and one can
rightly say that he has been the irst to bring to the
Orient the inluence of French painting.”5
Interestingly, both these visions had in common
the argument that Hamdi had for him a capacity
to depict things Oriental with great precision and
authenticity. hat was precisely what halasso con-
sidered to be the trademark that set him clearly
apart from western painters. In rather similar
fashion, a note on the painting purchased by the
French government in 1893 and representing
Turkish Ladies in a Sepulchral Chapel or Turbe
underlined the fact that this work was “interesting
for the accessories and for the accurate observation
of Ottoman life.”6 his was the most common way
in which Osman Hamdi’s paintings were received
by western audiences, or more accurately, critics.
When he exhibited his Genesis (1901) in London
in 1903, one comment, apparently unaware of the
very strong and even blasphemous symbolism of a
woman sitting on a Koran stand with her back to
a prayer niche (mihrab) and surrounded by sacred
books strewn across the loor, insisted on the art-
ist’s “innate” sense of light, evidently stemming
from his Oriental nature: “How colourless must
our Western tints appear to M. Hamdy’s Eastern
sun-tried eyes!”7 A few years later, in 1906, when
he exhibited his Young Emir Reading (1905), the
Times called it “almost as good as a Jérôme (sic),”8
apparently viewing it as an Orientalist piece; the
Speaker was stunned by “its extraordinarily inished
craftsmanship,” best illustrated by the “actuality of
the blue tiles at the back challeng[ing] that of Sir
Alma Tadema’s marble”;9 and the Art Journal also
found it “remarkable for its precise reproduction of
the blue tiles and other accessories of the divan.”10
Perhaps the best description of his reception in
the West was the detailed comment that appeared
in the Academy in 1909, when he exhibited two
new versions of earlier paintings, he heologian
(1902, 1907) and he Dervish at the Children’s
Tomb (1903, 1908, ill. 2):
Among the genre pictures, one re-discovery is to be
made of great interest, the work of Osman Hamdy
Bey, who exhibited one picture, Jeune Emir à l’Etude, in
1906. A Constantinopolitan, he wisely treats Oriental
subjects in a manner reminding Englishmen of Lewis.
He has the ine Oriental feeling for the harmony of
vivid colour more properly Persian than Turkish, and
he is capable of a digniied pathos not to be found
in Lewis’s work. he graduated harmony in his lesser
work, Le héologien, from the brilliant turquoise
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0
wall-tiles, the clear yellow of the igure’s silken coat and
the gold diapered white cotton of his shirt, through the
mother-of-pearl ornaments of the Koran-stand, to the
faded hues of the worn prayer-rug on which it stands,
could only have been seen by an Oriental; while the
material of the highly-glazed wall-tiles is exceedingly
skillfully given according to European methods. He
fails here in the lesh tints and modelling of the face,
but succeeds much better in the igure of his other,
iner picture, Le Tombeau des Enfants. In this it would
be diicult to surpass the richness and harmony of
his colouring. It is comparable to some of the inest
periods of Persian illumination. he full, purplish-ul-
tramarine of the wall-tiles, with their neutral tinted
frieze, the brownish madder of the tablets depending
from them, the little grey stone tombs, with their dec-
orations in faint colour, the Persian leopard’s skin, the
clear ochre of the rush-matting, the greyish ochre of
the carved entry, with the note of red in the socket of
the taper, and of sanguine in the roof of the entry, form
a perfect harmony of brilliant contrasts. he material
of the somewhat spoiled tiles, of the stonework, of the
rush-matting, and of a covering to one of the tombs are
admirably rendered. It is to be hoped that this beau-
tiful and interesting example of hybrid art will not be
allowed to leave this country.11
his anonymous reviewer obviously selected the
key word “hybrid” to represent the art of a man
sitting on a fence, between the tradition and method
of the West and the feelings and colors of the East.
his duality explains that western commentators
should have used such ambiguous ways to deine
Osman Hamdi and his art: He was an Orientalist
by formation and perhaps a lesser one compared to
his masters; yet he had one redeeming quality, that
of bringing a dimension of truth and authenticity
he owed to his identity and which gave him an edge
his European colleagues could not enjoy.
halasso’s interpretation of Osman Hamdi’s
oeuvre was not essentially diferent, considering
that he, too, insisted on the fact that the painter
difered from the Orientalists by the authenticity
of his depictions of the Orient. Yet it was clear that
his stand was more political, if only because of his
35
insistence on the fact that everything in Osman
Hamdi was Turkish, and because of the somewhat
defensive tone that seemed to transpire from his
comment. Once again, the context of the aftermath
of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was of great
importance: the end of thirty years of autocracy
under Abdülhamid II had created an atmosphere
of political efervescence with strong nationalist
and anti-imperialist undertones. True, during the
year and a half he survived this major event Osman
Hamdi was generally hailed as a victim of des-
potism and a fervent supporter of the new order,12
but he may well have been viewed with some suspi-
cion as a man whose allegiances were more western
and universal than “national.”
The Kemalist Backlash and Rehabilitation
Not surprisingly, it is under the Republic that
Osman Hamdi came under an open attack from
representatives of the new canon, very much geared
toward a nationalist and modernist interpretation
of art. hus, in an article devoted to a sort of survey
of the past ifty years in Turkish art, the art critic
Fikret Adil (1901–73) would pay homage to the
pioneer of modernity, but rather severely critique
the nature of his art:
I said [he was an] Orientalist because Hamdi, who was
a very accurate painter has ofered us in his paintings
subjects of very doubtful truthfulness, representing
a fairground Orient. Despite this afected and man-
nered style, Hamdi has produced works worthy of any
museum. In particular, despite an imperfect composi-
tion, his canvas representing four women in the harem
is of a rarely equaled beauty.13
Fikret Adil’s commentary was signiicant in
that it was published in La Turquie kémaliste, the
regime’s main propaganda medium directed at a
western audience, in 1937, at the height of Kemalist
involvement in culture and the arts. A few years
later, in 1940, the author Ahmet Muhip Dranas
(1909–80) would echo the same ambiguity by
praising the artist’s work “despite its decadent char-
acter.”14 In 1943, the painter and art critic Nurullah
36 EDHEM ELDEM THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 37

Berk (1906–82) joined the choir by linking Osman
Hamdi to western painting and, more speciically,
to Orientalist art:
In his art, Osman Hamdi has been inluenced by
western Orientalist painters and more particularly by
Gérôme. he colors he uses, even though not always
in harmony, are fresh and lively. He has painted on
large canvases scenes from Turkish life from yore, but
making it more Oriental than it really ever was.15
Berk’s critique became more severe when he
compared Hamdi’s art with that of some of his con-
temporaries, most notably Şeker Ahmed (1841–
1907) and Zekâi (1860–1919) Pashas, whose style
he considered to be “national”:
If we exclude Osman Hamdi, who painted Oriental
scenes based on a multitude of objects, fabrics, deco-
rations and weapons purchased from antique dealers
at the Grand Bazaar, thanks to their pure and healthy
vision, these artists have laid the foundations of a clean
and uncorrupted Turkish painting.16
he implicit message was clear: Osman Hamdi’s
work was “unclean and corrupted,” obviously due
to the fact that the “purity and health” of his vision
had been impaired by the inluence of western
artists like Gérôme and his followers.
his ideological intransigence that left Osman
Hamdi branded as an Orientalist—obviously per-
ceived as a sign of degeneration—was tempered by
the recognition of his merit and contribution to
Ottoman—i.e. Turkish—archaeology and muse-
ology.17 Yet it was not until the early 1970s that his
artistic reputation was redressed, most notably by
the publication in 1971 of Mustafa Cezar’s monu-
mental biography, Artistic Opening towards the West
and Osman Hamdi.18 Cezar was intent on rehabil-
itating the artist, whom he refused to see as some
representative of a western and Orientalist ifth
column. Obviously, as the title of his work sug-
gested, part of this efort relied on the perception
of his positive role as a prominent agent of modern-
ization and westernization. here was no essential
diiculty in doing so, given that even nationalist
and Kemalist historiography never really ques-
tioned this positive aspect of his life and career. Yet
Cezar wanted more: he intended to widen this pos-
itive aura to include his art. To do so, he needed
to prove that the accusation of Orientalism was
wrong and that his art needed to be reconsidered as
national, although this may not have been obvious
at irst sight:
It is true that Osman Hamdi looks like an Orientalist
painter due to the fact that he chose his themes in a way
that reminds foreigners’ views of the Orient; yet he has a
very diferent character from European Orientalists and
an entirely diferent way of choosing and depicting his
subjects. here is no doubt that the secret of this crucial
diference is based in the fact that Osman Hamdi was
a man of this land, a member of this society. He was
bound to have a diferent sensitivity from Europeans
with respect to issues regarding this country, and his
feelings were bound to ind a relection in his works.
When a western or a Levantine painter would depict
an Oriental theme, he would focus either on misery,
on the backwardness and poverty of the Orient, or on
those topics that were likely to interest a western audi-
ence. It is only natural that such choices can bear no
degree of sincerity. Osman Hamdi, on the contrary,
tried especially to render the beauty and majesty of the
mosques and mausoleums of the Orient. His canvases
depict one or often several characters outside or inside
these mosques and mausoleums. hese characters’ atti-
tudes, or even their costume, may sometimes appear
theatrical, as in the painting of the princes’ mausoleum;
but in general their expression of piety and devotion
is in full harmony with the places in which they are
represented.19
his was clearly a compromise between a pos-
itive reassessment of Ottoman westernization and
allegiance to the rather ambiguous positioning of
Kemalism vis-à-vis the West. Although it looked
very much like a rehash of halasso’s argument,
Cezar’s perspective had the advantage of presenting
Osman Hamdi as one of the architects of a “Turkish
Renaissance” that smoothly bridged the Ottoman
past with the Turkish Republic. Not surprisingly,
then, Cezar pretty much laid the foundations of the
quasi hagiographic narrative that still dominates
Turkish perceptions of Osman Hamdi Bey and his
oeuvre.
Saidian Interrogations
Not surprisingly, the irst signs of a challenge to this
“oicial compromise” came in the wake of Edward
Said’s Orientalism20 and of its relatively late trans-
lation into Turkish.21 İpek Aksüğür Duben was
the irst to propose a critical reading of Osman
Hamdi’s oeuvre through this new and critical take
on Orientalism. Interestingly, her analysis agreed
with Cezar’s in refuting the existence of similarities
between Hamdi and his western contemporaries.
Yet her arguments were not based on a political
reading of the artist’s themes, but rather on the
observation, along the lines of Linda Nochlin’s
analysis,22 that Osman Hamdi’s paintings lacked
some of the characteristics of Orientalist art: pho-
tographic realism, a vision of frozen and immutable
time, and a distance between the canvas and the
viewer, making it impossible for the latter with
the characters depicted, and thus relegating him/
her to the position of a voyeur. To Aksüğür Duben,
Osman Hamdi lacked the perfection in style that
would have enabled him to attain photographic
quality in his works; this in turn reduced the dis-
tance with the viewer, as did the fact that he often
represented himself as a central character of his
compositions.23 According to her, Osman Hamdi’s
painting needed to be understood from within the
context of his ideological and political positioning:
Like all the intellectuals of the Tanzimat, he too was
grappling with the pains of westernization. his artist,
who had had the chance to understand western culture
better than many others gave to his igurative painting
a rational thesis and exhibited it as a Tanzimat reformer.
It was natural that he should represent on his canvases
the mosques, the architecture and the settings he could
observe around him, together with objects and knick-
knacks he had at home. Gérôme and other Orientalists
tried to describe daily life in the European colonies
from their own point of view and thanks to images
of mosques, of baggy trousers and covered bazaars.
Osman Hamdi painted objects he drew from his own
life in order to serve his cause. he entirety of Osman
Hamdi’s oeuvre tends to conirm this interpretation.
I believe that his resemblance to western Orientalists
does not go beyond the use of certain objects.24
Aksüğür Duben’s arguments are open to dis-
cussion; yet they have had the merit of triggering a
renewed interest for a critical appraisal of Osman
Hamdi and his paintings. In a much more superi-
cial way, Vasıf Kortun agreed with the reformist argu-
ment and described his attitude as scientiic but also
respectful of the past. He insisted, however, on the
fact that he was a victim to an “intellectual schizo-
phrenia deriving from an incompatibility of men-
talities” and that his reformism could hardly go any
further than what “his Orientalism could tolerate.”
He was also the irst to address the issue of the art-
ist’s audience, arguing that his production was mostly
“directed at the European and American art markets,
or at their equivalent in the cosmopolitan Istanbul of
the time, namely the Pera salons.”25 In the following
years Semra Germaner and Zeynep İnankur, Turkish
specialists of western Orientalism, had also to address
the case of Osman Hamdi, but apparently found it
diicult to disentangle the issues of his Orientalism
and of his identity. Indeed, although they have called
him an “Ottoman Orientalist” and have underscored
the fact that he was the only Orientalist in the Orient,
their analysis still remains strongly tainted by a desire
to distance him from the Orientalist canon. hey
thus underline the presence in his paintings of ulema
“who question the dogmatic nature of religion,” and
his preference for depictions of “Ottoman intellec-
tuals reading or discussing,” rather than “fatalist, lazy,
and lascivious Orientals.” In other words, they con-
sider that his Orientalism is limited to his style and
did not penetrate his soul, whıch remained essentially
diferent due to his respect for Ottoman culture and
his latent reformism.26
If Germaner and İnankur seem to have fol-
lowed Cezar’s lead of a “national” antidote against
Orientalism, others have remained loyal to the
38 EDHEM ELDEM
Nochlin-inspired Aksüğür Duben argument of a
mental mismatch. Emine Fetvacı’s unpublished
MA thesis was a typical example, which set Osman
Hamdi apart from “true”—and evil—Orientalists
by stressing his empathy and reformism, and
irst proposed to establish a parallel between the
monuments depicted on his paintings and his
mission as a museum director.27 Ahmet Ersoy has
also followed the same line of thought, speaking
of “Osman Hamdi’s ambiguous position, both
inside and outside Orientalism.” According to
him, his paintings “relect a diferent intention-
ality, more serious and more profound” than that
of supericial Orientalists. he reason for this is
a “romantic and proto-nationalist dialogue with
the Ottoman and Islamic past.” he artist seeks
to “inspire a common historic conscience and to
situate in history the origins of an ideal and vir-
tuous Ottoman identity.”28
Post-Saidian Reconsiderations
A crucial phase in our understanding of Osman
Hamdi’s Orientalism was triggered by Zeynep
Çelik, inspired by her own work on the way in
which the Ottomans and Orientals staged their
own image and representation at the popular world
expositions of the second half of the 19th century.
She had introduced the concept of “speaking back to
Orientalist discourse” to describe Oriental attempts
to counter the negative stereotypes developed in the
West. In her view, that was precisely what Osman
Hamdi was doing. She thus shifted the debate from
the artist’s message for “internal consumption”
to a discourse directed at western audiences, thus
bringing an ideological dimension to what Kortun
had identiied as a commercial concern.29 Çelik’s
argument in turn allowed Ussama Makdisi, to
whom we owe the term “Ottoman Orientalism” to
present Osman Hamdi within the perspective of a
Turco-Ottoman Orientalism aimed at “civilizing”
the populations of the empire’s periphery, partic-
ularly the Arabs: ““Speaking back” (as Çelik has
called it) to Western Orientalist discourse entailed
the creation of an Ottoman Orientalist discourse
with its own internal complexity.”30
Perhaps the most decisive and radical step in
this direction was taken by Wendy Shaw, who, even
before Çelik, saw in Osman Hamdi’s oeuvre the
traces of a response to Orientalism. According to
her, the artist was doing much more than “speaking
back” to the West: in fact he was ighting back by
using the Orientalist touch as a way of “subverting”
mainstream Orientalism:
Posturing as admiration, mimicry often masks the seeds
of political resistance. he more European Osman
Hamdi appeared in dress, profession, and painterly
expression, the more his activities aimed to counterbal-
ance the cultural efects of European dominance over
the interpretation of antiquities in their historical and
nationalist context. he similarity between his multi-
farious professional activities and those of European
institutions designed to present the Orient as a territory
in need of colonial expansion camoulaged his subver-
sive anti-imperialist and Ottoman-nationalist agenda.
At the same time, the appropriation of the Orientalist
gaze allowed Osman Hamdi to use his paintings as
expressions of the political motivations and frustrations
behind his activities as the director of the Ottoman
Imperial Museum.31
his long historiographical discussion may seem
tedious; I nevertheless believe that it is necessary in
order to make some progress on grounds that are
both enriched by the results of this recent scholar-
ship and undermined by some of its assumptions
taken as historical proof. Indeed, apart from its
general tendency to clearly distinguish between
Osman Hamdi’s Orientalism and that of his
western contemporaries, one of the main common
denominators of all this literature is the almost
systematic absence of a truly historical approach.
It is striking to note that all the arguments con-
cerning his style and intent are mainly based on
considerations that are independent of any form
of contemporary documentation concerning his
life and career, with the exception of his paintings.
he whole process is thus based on an interpreta-
tion—a reading, as one tends to say today—of his
artistic production. he exercise consists mostly in
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0
analyzing his technique, the quality of his paint-
ings, the nature of the themes selected, the way
he sets his characters, and a number of other more
or less immediately perceivable details in order to
draw conclusions on his intent, his ideology, his
political stand, his artistic frustrations, his cultural
hesitations or any other aspect of his personality
likely to be related with his identity as an artist
and his positions with respect to his country and
Europe. However, as I complained at length in
an earlier article on the subject,32 this way of pro-
ceeding bears a serious risk of moving from inter-
pretation to over-interpretation, from assumption
to conviction, and from questions to self-ful-
illing prophecies. From a historian’s perspective,
the reason for these errors needs to be sought in
this lack of historicity. By accepting the paint-
ings themselves as sole source and only evidence,
one inevitably loses sight of other sources, which,
while they may be less appealing, are nevertheless
essential if one wishes to really reconstitute the his-
torical context in which Osman Hamdi has lived,
thought, acted, painted, and written. An yet there
is little, if any, interest for his scarce writings, or
for a truly critical assessment of the few texts he is
credited with; no efort to recreate the often vague
details of the environment in which he worked and
lived; practically no attempt to take into account
the chronological and thematic dimension of his
oeuvre. Instead, the dominant pattern seems to
consist of taking the most “talkative” of his paint-
ings and to force them into revealing the artist’s
identity, his thoughts, and his political struggles.
his ends up amounting to a sort of inversion of
historical method: while pretending to discover
the painter through his works, in actual fact one
tends to interpret his canvases based on whatever
is already known—or rather assumed—about his
personality.
I would like to illustrate my argument with a
few examples. One needs only to remember some
of the most powerfully evocative paintings by the
great man. It should also be remembered that
the evocative power of these paintings is almost
always associated with their name, knowing that
39
these names are generally of very recent attribu-
tion, indeed, invention, and that they often have
little or nothing to do with the name the artist
had given them originally (or often had not given
them at all). To illustrate this interplay between
image, name, and meaning, there is one partic-
ularly interesting example, that of the undated
canvas representing three clerics under the awning
of the Neise Sultan madrasa in Karaman. Aksüğür
Duben had already noted that this was an example
of a work where the artist “challenged traditional
ideas,” and where he distanced himself from the
Orientalist genre by using characters “representing
a new type of a rational man who refused to bow
before God.”33 According to Fetvacı, the same
painting was a manifesto in favor of reforming
Islam.34 Germaner and İnankur would come up
with a very similar interpretation by claiming that
it displayed “men of the faith of monumental
stature, full of self-conidence, and discussing
with books in their hands, contrary to Oriental
characters in Orientalist works.”35 It is clear that
this interpretive process relies on “reading” the
three men’s pose and the nature of their activity.
It appears that there is a form of moral hierarchy
of the possible uses that can be made of the divine
text: at the bottom is recitation and its byproduct,
listening; one step above is reading and medita-
tion; at the very top, citing and discussion. One
wonders however what it may be that allows these
authors to diferentiate reading from meditation,
listening from relection, or preaching from discus-
sion. One’s skepticism increases further in the face
of “Freudian slips,” as it were, revealing a certain
a priori. Indeed, how can one explain that on the
same page of a work, this painting should appear
as “Clerics speaking in front of a mosque door” in
the legend, and as “Clerics discussing in front of a
mosque door” in the text, when the objective is
to demonstrate the rational and reformist message
the artist is supposed to have given to his work?36
he same logic prevails in Wendy Shaw’s reading
of the Cutting Edge of the Scimitar, exhibited under
this name at the Paris Salon of 1908, but known in
Turkey as the Arms Vendor (Silah Taciri):
40 EDHEM ELDEM THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 41

3. O. Hamdi Bey, L’homme aux tortues, [Tortoise Charmer], 1906,
oil on canvas, 221 × 120 cm.
Pera Museum Suna and İnan Kıraç collection
he Weapons Merchant of 1908 shows his perception
of his role as the mediator of Ottoman heritage for a
modern world. In the foreground, his Ottomanized
alter ego sits on a Hellenic capital, surrounded by his-
torical Turkish helmets, swords and riles. he setting
makes the juxtaposition of these objects seem casual,
much as in the Painter at Work. However, the variety of
objects from several eras suggests that the main char-
acter acts, as did Osman Hamdi, as the arbiter of these
antiquities. he painting implies that the foundation of
Ottoman history relies on a classical past which forms
the basis for the preservation of multiple eras of her-
itage as well as for participation in a broad European
culture. he elder character hands a youth a shiny
sword, symbolic of the museum and the battle of antiq-
uities preservation, while instructing him about the
value of the historical objects which surround him and
that will serve as a weapon against the incursions of for-
eigners in their quest to collect. While both characters
wear timeless Oriental garb and sit in an ambiguous
setting, indeed a crossing between spaces underneath
a stairwell, their interest in the collection of disparate
objects and their potency reveals them as participants
in the modern quest for valuable antiquities.37
he list could be extended almost endlessly,
especially thanks to a number of paintings pro-
duced in the 1900s, which are particularly it for
such interpretations. hus Shaw interprets the
Dervish at the Children’s Türbe (1903 and 1908) as
a museographical allegory all the more easily since
she gives it a name it never had, the Keeper of the
Mausoleum. here is an evident parallel between a
mausoleum and a museum, all the more so if one
considers, as Shaw does, that Hamdi’s Imperial
Museum developed thanks to the sarcophagi he
discovered in, and brought from, Sidon. he keeper
of the mausoleum then becomes a metaphor for the
museum director, all the more so if he is represented
under the traits of the artist himself.38 he parallel
is tempting, but not really convincing. A dervish is
not a keeper, and this man’s somewhat ambiguous
gesture has more to do with awe and wonder, or a
form of exacerbated piety, rather than the familiar
and routine-like attitude one could expect from the
custodian of a holy shrine. At any rate, one really
wonders, how far can one go in this guessing game
about the artist’s possible intentions derived from
the interpretation of his paintings?
I have tried elsewhere to show, for example, that
Hamdi’s celebrated Tortoise Charmer (1906 and
1907, ill. 3) had been inspired by an engraving pub-
lished by a Swiss diplomat in a 1869 issue of the
Tour du monde, which represented a Korean tortoise
charmer in Japan.39 his amounted to bringing a
concrete and rather plausible explanation to this
scene, which Turkish art historians rather unsuc-
cessfully tried to link to the so-called Tulip Period
of the 1720s, known for an alleged use of tortoises
as walking candlesticks, or to an allegory of educa-
tion in the Empire, whereby the dervish would have
symbolized the master (Osman Hamdi himself )
hopelessly trying to force his stubborn pupils (the
tortoises) to learn properly.40 hese interpretations,
however, are all the less convincing if one con-
siders that the painting, when exhibited at the Paris
Salon of 1906, was named he Man with Tortoises
(L’homme aux tortues) in French, and simply Tortoises
in English, which makes such metaphors extremely
unlikely. I irmly believe that there is little, if any,
reason to seek some subliminal or implicit message
behind this painting. I would rather see it as a rather
typical Oriental setting, in fact a form of “transla-
tion” from a real Japanese scene to an imaginary
Ottoman one. To conirm this impression, I would
show the existence of a rather amusing watercolor
sketch by Hamdi that brings together the two char-
acters of the Cutting Edge of the Scimitar and the
dervish of the Man with Tortoises, but strangely with
not a single tortoise in sight (ill. 4).41
Obviously this is yet another case of over-
4. O. Hamdi Bey, sketch, n.d, watercolour, 36 × 25 cm.
reading or over-interpretation which rests on Faruk and Zerrin Sarç collection
several misconceptions. First and foremost, one
can observe an inversion of the basic reasoning
process on which the commentary of a work of art to a public intent on being educated and guided
should depend. Indeed, we know—or we think towards a better future. his should probably be
we know—more about Osman Hamdi than we seen as an ideological derivative of the nationalist,
know about any of his paintings, a situation which Kemalist, modernist concept of art, which expects
encourages us to project upon these works what every work to serve a cause. Yet in Osman Hamdi’s
we assume are the artist’s thoughts and beliefs. case, apart from the risk of reducing him to the
here is no mystery left: every concept we associate status of a slogan-machine, this vision also assumes
with Hamdi—modernity, westernization, patrio- that he was conscious of the existence of a public
tism, love and respect for heritage, museographic and that he wished to communicate with them.42
relexes—end up inding some sort of resonance in his naturally brings me to my third objection:
his works. he second problematic point is closely that most analyses of his work seem to ignore that
linked to the preceding one: the irm belief that apart for three local exhibitions in Pera in 1880,
his paintings often, if not always, bear some kind 1881, and 1882, Osman Hamdi exhibited all his
of message. Educating dervishes, reformist priests, paintings in western cities only. From 1888 on, if
collecting merchants, curating custodians… all the not earlier, and almost every year after 1902, his
characters and all the scenes he has depicted are paintings were displayed in Berlin, Paris, London,
assumed to have been painted in order to “speak” Munich, Chicago, and Liverpool. One wonders
42 EDHEM ELDEM THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 43

how his alleged messages could have really reso-
nated with these audiences, and the few comments
that they elicited does conirm this opacity: there
was simply not a single reference to the subjects
and themes allegedly present in his messages. One
must then conclude that if Osman Hamdi had
really intended to stuf his paintings with meta-
phors and allegories, he had utterly failed to get the
message through.
I would rather think that quite to the contrary
Osman Hamdi Bey was perfectly conscious of what
he could and should expect from a predominantly
western audience. he few commentaries that were
made of his paintings consistently referred to the
artist’s remarkable ability to capture the authenticity
of the Orient with his brush. London critics, espe-
cially, admired the warmth of the colors, the soft
shine of textiles, the beauty of glazed tiles, arguing
that only an Oriental would have been capable
of conveying this feeling with such accuracy and
authenticity.43 Were the European public opinion
just credulous and naïve to the point of “buying”
as authentic any Oriental setting as long as it was
signed by a “native”? Perhaps so, but was Osman
Hamdi himself not part and parcel of this hoax?
Should we not consider the need to turn around
completely our ideas about his intent and relect on
the possibility that we should see a lot of cynicism
where others have persistently seen an idealist stand
and a civilizing mission?
Alternative Readings
his issue is closely related to the more general
question of whether or not Osman Hamdi was
an Orientalist. Indeed, those who claim he was
not really an Orientalist and that he even may
have had anti-Orientalist tendencies rely more or
less explicitly on the meaning(s) of his painting.
If one were to accept the validity of the messages
attributed to him, Orientalism would obviously
remain a supericial veneer, having to do with
style rather than content. Some could even—as is
sometimes the case—see in this a form of sugar-
coating aiming at camoulaging the desire to turn
their own weapon against westerners, or at least of
consciously reappropriating this ideology to put it
to better—and nobler—use. If, however, there is
no hidden message or agenda, and if all this setting
consists merely of decorative elements intended for
a western audience, then one may have to come to
terms with the image of Osman Hamdi as purely
and simply Orientalist. True enough, a closer look
at the use he made of those objects and settings
that were so highly praised by some western critics
reveals an artistic freedom that contradicts most
of the arguments supporting his non- or anti-Ori-
entalist stand. His paintings generally display a
small number of settings constantly repeated and
reinvented, often dissociated from their original
context, with characters wearing costumes defying
deinition, surrounded by a mish mash of unrelated
and constantly recycled objects, while the general
atmosphere is always imbued with timelessness and
with an aura of mysticism. One can thus discover
that the loggias lanking the main entrance of the
famous Green Mosque of Bursa (Yeşil Cami) can
occasionally accommodate wise clerics reading
or reciting the Koran (Koranic Instruction, 1890;
Reading the Koran, n.d.), but also become the
setting for a bath scene (Young Woman Having her
Hair Combed, 1881, 1882, and n.d.), or the corner
of a room in the harem (he Two Musicians, 1880;
he Musician Women, 1882). his is a well-known
Orientalist modus operandi, oft-used by the major
representatives of the genre, especially Gérôme:
that of the de- and re-contextualization of space,
which, as long as it was clearly marked with recog-
nizable Orientals features, could be used as a setting
for a great diversity of unrelated scenes. he same is
true of the characters in each of his works: almost
invariably a single and almost monumental male
igure, wearing Oriental and/or Islamic garb—one
never knows exactly—represented in some sort of
a digniied and thoughtful pose, the meaning of
which was far from being obvious to the viewers.
As to the objects, they were mostly stereotypical,
repeated from one canvas to the other and some-
times as incongruous as a leopard skin in a mauso-
leum (he Dervish at the Children’s Tomb, 1903)…
What was at hand, really, was a setting which
aimed at producing a feeling of authenticity by
combining decors, characters, and objects. he
result was a very particular “syntax” recognizable
in almost every single work by the artist, espe-
cially among those he produced between 1902 and
1908, when he was most active and present on the
western artistic scene. he best illustration of his
repetitive style is to be found in the rather amusing
way in which the British painter Edward Poynter,
to whom he had sent a photograph of his latest
painting, he Man with Tortoises (1906), thought
he had seen it the previous year in Paris.44 his
was a blatant mistake, since that painting did not
exist yet in 1905. One can guess what the cause of
this confusion had been: the painting Poynter had
seen in Paris was he Believer Counting His Beads
(1905), but he had mixed up the two paintings
because despite major diferences in realization,
the two works were almost identical in their com-
positions. All these paintings were set in a partial
architectural setting with “typical” decorative ele-
ments—tiles, calligraphic inscriptions, carved
wooden door panels, pointed arches—,a char-
acter with recognizable Islamic features—generally
the artist himself in a colorful dress-like costume
and wearing Oriental headgear—,and a few local
objects—manuscripts, candlesticks, bookstands,
carpets, lamps. With such collages of individu-
ally authentic elements, often copied from photo-
graphs, Osman Hamdi could compose a scene that
was not authentic, but that was plausible, at least
enough so to fool an uninformed and unsuspecting
western audience who was ready to accept as true
whatever an Oriental artist was willing to reveal of
his familiar environment.
Under these circumstances, one fails to see how
Osman Hamdi could be exonerated from accu-
sations of Orientalism. he constructed or even
invented nature of his scenes, based on the pho-
torealism of its constitutive elements, the striking
timelessness of his compositions, and the obvious
signs of decay seen here and there in his paintings:
the falling plaster and broken tiles of the rundown
walls, the worn-out rugs on the loor, the spider
webs in every corner serve as a constant reminder
of a very Orientalist take on the damages of the
passage time on an irremediably frozen past.
True, this should not let us ignore the fact that
Osman Hamdi’s Orientalism difered in many ways
from the often much cruder form it could take
under the brush of western artists. He evidently
had no particular taste for violent scenes and the
promise of a conlict in his Zeybek on the Lookout
(1867) or the vague and mild allusion to violence
in the title of his Cutting Edge of the Scimitar (1908)
seem to have been as far as he was ever willing to lirt
with this familiar Orientalist theme. Likewise, the
kind of eroticism and sexuality unleashed in some
western Orientalist works is totally absent from his
paintings, even though we tend to forget that quite
a number of them do depict (fully clothed) women
in situations of servility and submission closely
linked to the context of harems, of polygamy, and
of slavery. herefore, while it is true that Osman
Hamdi’s Orientalist approach was somewhat set
apart from some typical artistic currents in the
West, it does not necessarily follow from this that
his intention was to “speak back” to European
Orientalism,45 and even less to subvert it by turning
its own weapons against it.46 Appealing as they may
be, these claims have a tendency to exalt Osman
Hamdi while at the same time reducing Orientalism
to a form of caricature. Indeed, if keeping clothes on
women or avoiding clichés of violence is a suicient
condition to escape accusations of Orientalism,
there is quite a number of Orientalists—Lewis or
Deutsch, for example—who would have no dii-
culty in this respect. Moreover, the idea of Osman
Hamdi Bey—as an Ottoman Muslim subject and a
high ranking bureaucrat at the head of the Imperial
Museum—painting Orientalist scenes of sex and
violence seem so unlikely and even preposterous,
that I fail to see the wisdom of basing any argu-
ment on the fact that he did not paint any. I would
rather argue that while the visions of the Orient
that dominate his works may have been much more
restrained than Gérôme’s or Lecomte du Noüy’s,
they were nevertheless tainted with a very strong
dose of essentialism. Most of all, quite to the con-
trary of the claims above, it seems rather obvious
44 EDHEM ELDEM
that his paintings did not disturb the western estab-
lishment in any way, and that they did not challenge
any of the basic tenets of the dominant discourse of
the time. What they did at most was to ofer to the
public the impression—not to say the illusion—of
a reality he would have been more familiar with due
to his origins and identity. On the other hand, there
is little doubt that this was precisely what Osman
Hamdi was after: to ind a formula that would fulil
western expectations and which he could exploit
without great diiculty thanks to permutations of
objects, costumes, and spaces.
His was therefore a very pragmatic kind of
Orientalism, and a very eicient one too if one
considers the ease with which his paintings were
accepted during the last decade of his life. Indeed,
during the eight years between 1901 and 1908,
he managed to have no less than twelve paintings
accepted at ten European exhibitions and salons.
Obviously the power he derived from his position
at the head of the Imperial Museum and his leverage
over foreign excavations had a lot to do with this
success, but there is little doubt that it was also due
to the appeal of the genre he had now mastered.
In that sense, what is much more surprising is that
this kind of Orientalism should have managed to
conquer an Ottoman, and even Muslim, audience.
On one of the rare occasions when Osman Hamdi
exhibited some paintings in his own country, at
the 1880 ABC Club exhibition, a certain Abdullah
Kâmil, writing in the daily Osmanli, had made a
strong case for the now famous Two Musicians:
From the perspective of composition, realization,
feeling, and color, Hamdy Bey’s painting rivals his
other works, and that is no small feat. he young girls’
poses are very natural, full of grace and breadth. he
painting’s general feel is soft, calm, and pleasing to the
eye; the drapes are well thrown and studied with great
detail. he expression on the two young girls’ faces is
earnest and attractive; we would have wanted to see
more force in it, however, not with respect to color,
which cannot be any better, but regarding the model
viewed exclusively from the artist’s perspective. he
accessories, musical instruments, mat carpets, fabrics,
and background are remarkably accurate and perfectly
detailed.47
Obviously this art critic had not realized that
the scene he so strongly admired had been entirely
invented in one of the most unlikely spaces ever,
one of the two loggias (sofa) located on each side of
the main entrance of the Green Mosque in Bursa.
As a typical example of a technique he would use
more and more frequently, the painting included
“remarkably accurate” objects in Abdullah Kâmil’s
words, but with that diference that the overall
scene was completely invented and in no way “true.”
Abdullah Kâmil’s gullibility was all the more sur-
prising if one considers that during the exhibition
held the following year he had criticized at length
the artist Stefano Farneti for his failure to convince
him about the authenticity of his Mosque Door:
his beautiful page is characterized by a forceful thrust;
we believe it has only one shortcoming, but a crucial
one, too: indeed, the characters are alive, and this is
certainly a rare quality, which we entirely approve of
from this perspective. However, we would like to see
them live as would Muslims going to, or returning
from, their prayers. hat is not the case here; despite
their Oriental costumes, they seem to be in the middle
of Paris, on the boulevards. he ladies, especially, are
not Muslims, but rather belles petites. One should study
real characters in Hamdy Bey’s paintings.48
here was some irony to this, considering to
what extent Osman Hamdi’s works had the very
same characteristic of presenting colorful local
scenes that were actually rather improbable. His
own three versions of the same scene (Veiled Women
at the Mosque Entrance, 1881; In Front of the Green
Mosque, 1882; he Mosque Entrance, 1891) dif-
fered little from Farneti’s, except with respect to
the artist’s identity. Other than that, the women
depicted wearing colourful feraces and walking
up the mosque’s (invented) stairs of the Muradiye
and Green Mosques in Bursa may not have looked
exactly like Parisian belles, but they were never-
theless completely out of context in front of these
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0
15th-century mosques. Much later, his Young Emir
Reading (1905) is even more striking regarding
its mixture of authentic and incongruous details.
A young man is depicted lying on his belly on a
marble platform covered with an Oriental carpet,
reading from a very large sized volume, which one
cannot fail to identify as a Koran. he problem,
however, is that rather than a “real” Oriental the
young man looks very much like he is wearing a
costume, a feeling that should not come as a sur-
prise, considering that the model was no other than
the artist’s son, Edhem (1882–1957), a very west-
ernized architect and archeologist who even seems
to have avoided posing with a fez in all his known
photographic portraits. His costume, bearing traces
of an Indian style, is in fact impossible to deine;
so is the setting, even though certain decorative
elements—such as the marble railing and the cal-
ligraphic frieze—suggest the interior of a mosque.
he imposing candlestick and its massive taper,
often used by the artist, would have their place
in a mausoleum, next to a cenotaph; the niche is
illed with manuscript volumes—including Hafez’s
Divan and Rumi’s Mathnawi—which provide a
precious local touch, but no indication as to the
nature of the setting. Finally, the young man’s posi-
tion is by far the strangest element in this composi-
tion: apart from the obvious discomfort of using a
marble platform barely covered by an old rug as if
it were a sofa, one cannot fail to wonder at the sight
of this young man reading the Koran much like
a young woman would browse through a fashion
magazine.
his strange mix of authenticity and improb-
ability was apparently not an issue for a western
audience who seemed rather satisied with the end
result:
Conspicuous in the fourth room is an oriental picture
by an Oriental—the Jeune Emir à l’étude, by Osman
Hamdy Bey—showing the subject reclining at full
length on his stomach, supporting his shoulders by his
elbows, and reading a substantial tome a few inches
from his nose. he position of the igure is truly oriental
in its entire lack of strenuousness and its suggestion, to
45
Western eyes, of mild discomfort. Artistically the chief
attraction of the week is its extraordinarily inished
craftsmanship. here is not a square inch on the canvas
that has not received the most minute attention; the
robe, the skin, the interior surroundings, are master-
pieces of complete imitation. he actuality of the blue
tiles at the back challenges that of Sir Alma Tadema’s
marble. What is its artistic merit we are as unable to
guess as we are to deny the months of care and labour it
must have involved.49
Although it was completely distorted by the
rather naïve expectations of a western audience ready
to discover an Oriental precisely where the Orient
was most unlikely, Osman Hamdi’s message came
through without the least problem. One must recog-
nize the artist’s talent and genius at having invented
a sort of foolproof formula that gave him access to
an artist scene that remained closed to most of his
compatriots. Once again, his painting should not be
viewed as a form of reaction, rebellion, or subver-
sion, but rather as a sales strategy, as it were. here
was not much he could attain with the message of a
young man reading a book, even a holy one;50 obvi-
ously all the charm and appeal of this work rested
in its calm and detailed Orientalism, invented and
recomposed as it may have been.
A Quest for the Origins
From a historian’s perspective, to claim that Osman
Hamdi practiced a conscious and constructed form
of Orientalism is not really suicient; one would
have to try and understand how he had come
to this point. Indeed, looking back at the artist’s
overall work, one can distinguish several phases and
tendencies throughout his career. he 1870s were
dominated by a style one would tentatively call
“normal,” in the sense that it bore no trace of any
Orientalizing efort, as suggested by a few still lives
and several landscapes. During the following decade
appear his irst harem scenes imbued with a very
“soft” kind of Orientalism: young women kneeling
or standing, alone or in groups, set in ill-deined
interiors decorated with tiles and carpets. his is
also the time when he will play with contemporary
46 EDHEM ELDEM
scenes by seeking a sort of compromise between
the Orientalist scenes he had been producing for
some time and a desire to depict certain aspects of
the Ottoman society of the time. Typical exam-
ples of this phase are his large canvases depicting
women wearing colorful feraces in front of the walls
of Sultan Ahmed mosque or on the (imagined)
stairs leading to the entrance of Bursa’s Muradiye
or Green mosques. hese elegant Muslim women
stand almost like a visual representation of Pierre
Loti’s Aziyade and other désenchantées… Finally,
one can talk of a last and most successful phase,
the irst examples of which could already be sensed
in the early 1890s, and which would culminate in
the 1900s: the pure Orientalist scenes, which I have
tried to describe and analyze in the preceding pages.
Interestingly, however, all along this long road
towards Orientalism, Osman Hamdi has also pro-
duced a rather large number of portraits that simply
do not it this pattern. Tens of such portraits of
family members and acquaintances, some of them
very modest individuals from Eskihisar, are charac-
terized by the total absence of any kind of Orientalist
or even just Oriental lavor. hey were all done,
including those of a isherman or a peasant, in the
purest western style. One needs therefore to conclude
that Osman Hamdi practiced two diferent genres
that never mixed: on the one hand, a sort of “bon
pour l’Occident” style designed for western audiences
and making a systematic use of Islamic and Oriental
elements, and on the other, a western and bourgeois
style, which he devoted to his everyday life, and to
his intimate and familial environment. his dualism
had nothing to do with some form of artistic schizo-
phrenia, but rather with a conscious partitioning of
the two distinct domains of his artistic production:
private and public, real and imaginary, western and
Oriental, bourgeois and Orientalist…
To make sense of this complex trajectory, one
would need to return to the origins, to Hamdi’s ear-
liest paintings, which he managed to exhibit during
his Parisian years in the 1860s. One would then
probably have to start with a too often neglected
detail concerning the beginning of his artistic career,
namely that it was not as a painter that he appeared
for the irst time at the Paris Salon, but as a model.
Indeed, one of the two paintings that his master
Gustave Boulanger exhibited at the 1865 Salon bore
the explicit title of Portrait of Hamdy-Bey. he few
comments by contemporary critics on this now lost
work give suicient clues to somehow visualize it:
he Portrait of Hamdy-Bey is a masterpiece. A tanned
young man with his head wrapped in a turban of the
same tone, standing with his back against a window
from where we can catch a glimpse of a forest; the white
wall against which he stands out sets a perfect harmony
between all the accessories combined in skillful clashes
and with exquisite elegance.51
his episode may seem to be only a point of
detail, yet I believe it does reveal a certain state
of mind. If one considers that the young Osman
Hamdi spent most of his time and energy in Paris
emulating a western lifestyle, there is some irony
to the fact that his master should have asked him
to pose as an Oriental. From a certain point of
view, the young man’s situation was not unlike that
of women, who, according to Guerilla Girls, had
to be naked to enter art museums.52 Wrapped in
an Oriental cloak, boasting a turban and holding
a sword, the modernist and westernized young
Ottoman had been turned into a “true” Turk. He
probably had wholeheartedly submitted to this
travesty, and he may even have enjoyed it; neverthe-
less this was a concession made to the Orientalist
clichés of the time, which wanted to put to use
his identity and his darkish complexion. Was this
service to Boulanger partly responsible for the fact
that he was admitted to the Salon the following
year, this time as an artist? We do not know, but it
does seem that the painting he exhibited—Turkish
Woman53—followed the same logic, albeit a notch
above, as this time the Oriental was given the
opportunity to represent his world as an artist. he
painting being lost, we do not know how the said
Turkish woman was represented; not surprisingly,
the only comment on it was so highly politicized
that it did not even bother describing the painting:
Before we inish, let us note the encouraging irst steps
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0
of an amateur who exhibits a Young Turkish Woman in
the great hall, under number 609. his painting is the
making of Mr. Osman Hamdy, the son of a member
of the Turkish cabinet, and an attaché at the Porte’s
Ministry of Foreign Afairs. He has arrived eight years
ago in Paris and, having shown the greatest disposition
toward painting, has obtained from his government the
permission to cultivate this talent under the supervision
of one of our most distinguished masters, Mr. Gustave
Boulanger. he canvas he exhibits this year is a irst try,
but one that bodes well for this young artist’s future.
One cannot praise enough the Ottoman government for
promoting and favoring such clear a vocation and such
promising talent despite the Koran’s ban on painting.54
he following year, the Universal Exposition
was the occasion for Osman Hamdi to exhibit
three works in the Ottoman section of this major
international event: he Stop of the Tchinganés (or
he Encampment of the Gypsies), he Zeybek on
the Lookout and he Zeybek’s Death  (or he Slain
Zeybek).55 Obviously he had all the reasons to exploit
the Oriental theme of the preceding year: after all,
as the mosque, the kiosk, the bath and the cofee-
house that were built in the Exposition gardens, the
Ottoman participation responded to an expectation
of exoticism and local lavor. Yet in actual fact it
appears that other artists under the same section had
opted for much less Oriental themes. Victor-Marie
de Launay exhibited a Patrol of Monks in Palermo,
Malborough’s Song, and a Sicilian Post, while among
a certain C. Labbé’s canvases one could ind a Dog
Guarding Game, a Heron and Bittern, an Ara and
Cockatoo Fighting, a Harvesting Oranges and two still
lives.56 True, as one of the two only Muslim artists,
Osman Hamdi may have felt that he had a stronger
duty to represent “local” scenes than foreign artists
residing in the Levant.
Hamdi’s three paintings perfectly it the much
appreciated ethnographical genre of the time. As two
of these paintings are lost without leaving any written
trace, one can hardly comment on their exact con-
tents. he Zeybek on the Lookout, however, has not
only survived to this day (ill. 5); it has also been the
object of a detailed commentary by Marie de Launay,
47
Hamdi’s fellow exhibitor and future collaborator. he
painting represents a Zeybek, one of these famous
bandits cum irregulars of western Anatolia, lying lat
on his stomach on a rocky edge, scanning the horizon:
he main quality of these paintings is their sincerity.
he artist has not sought to imitate another; he has
viewed the nature in all simplicity, without any bias,
without any efort at using this or that efect or colors
inspired by one or another master. He has only tried
to be true, and in this he has succeeded. Without
giving his Zeybek a theatrical pose, without skillfully
regrouping on his canvas the frightened travelers,
without masking the sky with dark clouds in order to
darken the scene while at the same time focusing the
light on the principal character, he has managed to ind
drama as it really exists, instead of how one sees it on
stage. his bandit, calmly looking out for his victim in
a landscape made of pure lines and of rosy tones, simply
gives one the shivers.57
If we are to believe de Launay, this was the most
violent of the artist’s works, which rested not on
explicit violence but rather on the promise of vio-
lence to come. We owe to the art historian Gülru
Çakmak the fascinating discovery of the painting’s
actual genealogy. Osman Hamdi’s Zeybek on the
Lookout is a very faithful adaptation of Gustave
Boulanger’s Arab Scouts, exhibited at the 1857 Salon,
and of which it seems only a contemporary repro-
duction has survived (ill. 6).58 Of course, Hamdi
had reduced Boulanger’s three characters to only
one, in a sense zooming in on one central character.
More importantly, he had “translated” the orig-
inal Arab scene into a Turkish one by replacing the
burnous-clad Arab watchmen by a Zeybek in his
very typical garb. By and large, however, the resem-
blance between the two paintings is too striking to
suggest a simple coincidence, especially when one
knows that Boulanger had been Hamdi’s master.
his discovery deserved to be further studied, as
Çakmak herself did in a recent article.59 According
to her, the painting found its place in the ongoing
trends of contemporary French painting. For one,
it linked up to Decamps’ Orientalist paintings,
48 EDHEM ELDEM
in the style of his Turkish Patrol (1831)60 and his
Turkish Guard-House (1834),61  but also to scenes
of banditry and brigandage that were popular since
the seventeenth century. However, Osman Hamdi’s
Zeybek was set apart from these two traditions by
the isolation and centrality of the character and the
total absence of reference to his prey or to violence
altogether. From this perspective, according to
Çakmak, it came closer to David’s tradition of the
representation of the heroic male body, half active,
and half resting. Moreover, the reddish sky and the
bluish mountainous landscape suggested the artist’s
desire to give the impression of a painting done on
the spot, in open air, somewhat in the style of the
Barbizon School or of héodore Rousseau’s work.
Çakmak concluded my describing Hamdi’s pres-
ence amidst the mutations of French painting:
By choosing as his protagonist the contemporary hero-
bandit motif of the Zeïbek, by giving primacy to this
single heroic male and thereby inscribing himself to
the Davidian lineage, by setting this igure in a generic
landscape devoid of codes of an exoticized setting, by
imbuing the scene with the freshness and immediacy
of an open-air sketch, and above all, by exhibiting
this painting at the Ottoman section of the Universal
Exhibition, Hamdi cannily dealt with the urgent issue
of depicting the here and now, albeit the here and now
of the Ottoman Empire.62
While welcoming this interesting and innova-
tive reading of the painting in the broader context
of the evolution of French painting, I am not sure I
am convinced by the argument and its demonstra-
tion. Perhaps due to an excessively cynical posture
or to a form of latent Orientalism, I ind it dii-
cult to grant the young Ottoman artist so much
autonomy and consciousness. Quite the contrary, I
believe that his immediate entourage was powerful
and inluent enough to impose on him the format
he had chosen for this work, without any introspec-
tion and relection on the possible meaning and
consequences of his artistic choices.
To support my argument, I would point once
again at the striking similarities between Boulanger’s
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 49
scouts and Hamdi’s Zeybek. Similarities in com-
position, as we have already observed, but also in
the impression left, independently of the number
of characters or of the Zeybek’s isolated centrality.
I take as proof the incredible parallelism between
the comments that were made for both paint-
ings. When de Launay suggested that Hamdi had
“managed to ind drama as it really exists,” he
seemed to be echoing Alfred Busquet’s comment,
ten years earlier, on Boulanger’s canvas: “Mr.
Rodolphe Boulanger has seized and rendered with
a irm, calm, and luminous brush the sweetness of
the atmosphere, the solemnity of the desert, and
the emotion of drama.”63 “He has only tried to be
true, and in this he has succeeded,” said de Launay
of Hamdi’s Zeybek, much like an anonymous critic
said of Boulanger’s scouts a decade earlier: “his
scene, observed in nature, leaves a striking impres-
sion of truth.”64 Even de Launay’s “shivers” in 1867
had a counterpart in Louis Auvray’s comment of
1857: “hese three spies in the middle of this sol-
itude are menacing to the point of making one
tremble.”65 One could multiply the examples; I will
only quote in extenso a comment by héophile
6. G.-R. Boulanger, Les Éclaireurs arabes, [Arab Scouts], 1857.
Gautier, evidently seduced by Boulanger’s painting: Engraving from an etching by C.-P. Auguste Carey. L’Artiste, new series, Vol. III (1858), p. 188.
We prefer to Julius Caesar the Choassa, Arab Scouts.
Here is, it seems, the true path of talent that Mr. G.-R. of the rising sun, betraying the encampment’s hearth. zooming in on one of the three characters? Is not
Boulanger should pursue: his Scouts is a very successful here is in this painting a very striking feeling of great- Osman Hamdi’s landscape strangely reminiscent
painting, the accuracy of which we can guarantee, ness, of solitude, of silence. he scouts are at the same of that of Boulanger’s Scouts? he most interesting
having followed in 1845 the expedition to Kabylia and time elusive, brave, and cautious, and they summarize point, however, remains the common theme of the
witnessed such scenes with our own eyes. he morning very well, through their diferent traits of character, watchman or of the armed warrior on the lookout.
rises with its blue and pink tints on an immense horizon three of the races of Algeria.66 Çakmak is absolutely right in underlining the dif-
of barren mountains whose chain and peaks form a sort ference between this particular scene and more tra-
of motionless ocean. Crawling like Fenimore Cooper’s his description had everything and more: the ditional representations of bandits and brigands,
Indians, three scouts have avoided dangerous encoun- truthfulness of the scene, warranted by the critic’s generally depicted in the midst of violent action:
ters and managed to reach the top of a rock. One of own experience; the colors so similar to those of ambush, robbery, abduction, rape… Contrary to
them, very young, almost a child, his skin dark as a the Zeybek; the forceful suggestion of the unseen, highway robbers, the lookout stands aloof, iso-
mulatto’s, with a whole arsenal of weapons poking from evoking the moments that had preceded the scene, lated, hidden, seeing without being seen. his sub-
his belt, rises his upper body on his bony and nervous but also those that would perhaps follow. On top genre seems indeed to have been more recent, as I
arms, his inquisitive gaze plunging into the abyss. of all this, the viewer could enjoy the ethnographic have not been able to ind any earlier example than
Slightly farther, two Arabs, one in a black burnous and discovery of the diversity of Algerian physiognomy. Eugène Delacroix’s Arab Watching for a Lion, prob-
almost standing, the other lying on his stomach, scan In the face of such great similarities between the ably dating from the 1830s.67 It is probably a very
the horizon like eagles. he enemy has been spotted; a master’s and his student’s works, should one still similar scene that Charles Bauchal claimed to have
plume of blue smoke slowly ascends in the direction seek in David’s inluence the explanation for the seen in Becker and Guterbock’s studio in Berlin in
50
7. “Une embuscade dans le désert – Épisode de la révolte d’une tribu algérienne
(Photographie de M. Goupil, d’après le tableau de M. Janet-Lange),” L’univers illustré, 1104 (20 May 1876), p. 325.
1852: “[…] a group of Bedouins lying in ambush
in the desert, watching out for their prey under the
cover of dusk.”68 his was the theme that Boulanger
and, ten years after him, Osman Hamdi had decided
to exploit. here were many other, too, as this kind
of scene, which could vary from the simple watch
to the ambush, seemed to appeal to a number of
contemporary artists. Janet-Lange (1815–72), a
specialist of war scenes, chose to invert the roles in
his Desert Ambush, by depicting a unit of Zouaves
about to ambush an unsuspecting Algerian tribe; this
painting would later be used in the illustrated press
in order to present to the viewers an alleged episode
of the Algerian insurrection (ill. 7).69 he painter
Évariste-Vital Luminais (1821–96), adapted the
genre to his own specialty, historic scenes of Gaul, in
his Gallic Watchman70 and Gallic Scouts.71
It was clear then that Osman Hamdi was fol-
lowing his master throughout a theme of genre
painting. To claim that he was innovating would
certainly be an exaggeration; nevertheless, it is
undeniable that he had the merit of adapting
an original work to his own needs. he irst step
in this process seems to have been to ind a way
to bring a distinctive and original touch to his
EDHEM ELDEM
painting. Quite naturally, ethnography and local
lavor came in handy for this purpose, as man-
ifested in the image of the Zeybek, this bandit
from the region of Aydin, often used as an irreg-
ular in the army. However the artistic lineage
proposed by Çakmak, which linked Hamdi’s
Zeybek to Decamps’ Turkish Patrol and other
Orientalist works simply does not work, as his tur-
ban-wearing militias on horseback have nothing
in common with the Zeybeks, so easy to recognize
through their costume and their very typical head-
gear. In fact, it is only twenty to twenty-ive years
after Decamps’ work that the Anatolian Zeybek
would make his massive entry into western visual
culture, thanks to the Crimean War. his interna-
tional conlict would suddenly bring the Zeybeks
to the forefront by (often wrongly) identifying
them with the more general category of the
bashi-bozouk (in Turkish, başıbozuk) or irregulars.
Maxime du Camp’s long comment on Decamps’
Turkish Patrol, exhibited as part of a retrospective
devoted to the artist at the Universal Exposition
of 1855, relects an interesting mix of confusion
and fascination with respect to these men. After
enumerating their rather paradoxical talents and
THE LIFE AND MIND
8. “Types de l’Anatolie,” A. de Moustier, “Voyage de Constantinople à Éphèse, par l’intérieur de l’Asie Mineure, Bithynie, Phrygie, Lydie,
Ionie,” Le Tour du monde. Nouveau journal des voyages (1864/1), p. 237.
features—generous bandits, homicidal body-
guards, caravan leaders and looters—he reminded
his readers of the popularity of the Zeybeks:
“hey are probably well-known in France today,
as for some time they have been much heard of
under the name of Bashi-Bozouks.”72 However,
du Camp was mistaken in assuming the guards
of the Turkish Patrol were Zeybeks; his comment
had apparently been triggered by the coincidence
of the retrospective on Decamps with the recently
rising popularity of the Zeybek. He was one of
the irst to explicitly mention these men, and he
would soon be followed by the illustrated press and
popular travel literature. In a volume of Firmin
Didot’s best-selling series of L’Univers devoted to
Asia Minor, Charles Texier had reserved two full
pages to a description of the Zeybeks.73 Two years
O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 51
later, in 1864, the famous travel magazine Le Tour
du monde published a travelogue by the count de
Moustier from Constantinople to Ephesus with
several pages devoted to the Zeybeks, including a
full-page plate of “Anatolian types” at the centre of
whom proudly stood two of them (ill. 8).74
Under these circumstances it becomes easier
to understand Osman Hamdi’s motivation. One
could not go wrong with a Zeybek: he it perfectly
that shady and ambiguous character of the noble
bandit and, most of all, he had recently become
a familiar igure of French popular culture. From
Hamdi’s perspective, the irst step must have
been to choose a scene; one could even imagine
Boulanger proposing: “My dear Hamdy, why don’t
you do a Turkish version of my Scouts?...” Once
that was done he would have had to come up with
52
5. O. Hamdi Bey, Zeïbek à l’afût, [Zeybek on the Lookout], 1867, oil on canvas. Private collection
the appropriate character(s) that would lend the
painting its local touch. hat is where I would see
the supreme irony in the whole process: to give his
painting a touch of truth and authenticity, Osman
Hamdi had no other recourse than to use a western
iconographic repertoire. Indeed, no one has ever
asked a rather simple but crucial question: where
would Osman Hamdi, settled and living in Paris
since 1860, have been able to ind a model for his
Zeybek other than in the Parisian Salons and illus-
trated magazines of the time? Even during his youth
in Istanbul, a Zeybek was not a common sight in
the Imperial capital, let alone in the privileged
environment of Hamdi’s father Edhem Pasha’s
mansion and household. A bandit of the plains of
the Meander and an irregular sent out to the front
during the Crimean War, the Zeybek owed most of
his fame and visibility to the curiosity his strange
costume and often exaggerated reputation triggered
among western travelers, journalists, and artists. In
short, his image was a western creation, particularly
during the Crimean War.
Can one try to go beyond these assumptions and
try to determine with some precision the exact iliation
EDHEM ELDEM
of Osman Hamdi’s Zeybek? Among numerous rep-
resentations of this character there is one that seems
to it particularly well: that of the Zeybek seated on
the left side of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s famous Almée
(1863).75 Everything its perfectly: the shape and
size of the headgear; the color and very particular
shape of the jacket and cape; that of the shirt and its
knuckles; inally the short and baggy pants reaching
just above the knees… he only diference seems to
have been in Hamdi’s Zeybek’s red and black gaiters
and moccassins, which do not match Gérôme’s bare
feet and beige gaiters. Yet in this particular case, is it
not striking that these accessories should be found on
the feet and legs of another Zeybek, sitting slightly to
the right of the irst, half hidden by the curves of the
belly dancer? Chronologically too, the hypothesis
works ine. Gérôme sold this painting to his father-
in-law Goupil in 1864, but exhibited it at the 1864
Salon, where Osman Hamdi would certainly have
seen it.76
At any rate, I think there is little doubt left
as to the double legacy behind the Zeybek on the
Lookout: it owes its genre, or rather its subgenre,
and its landscape to Boulanger, while Gérôme
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 53
evidently gave it the central character that would
lend it a “Turkish” character. Both these inluences
are more than plausible, knowing that Osman
Hamdi worked at Boulanger’s studio and that,
even though Gérôme was not his master, con-
trary to what has so often been claimed with no
evidence whatsoever, it would have been diicult
for him not to be receptive to this major painter’s
oeuvre in the 1860s. he result is paradoxical, to
say the least: a young Ottoman artist, who was
expected to produce a “local” and authentic work,
was able to do so only by using as a model two
works of renowned Orientalist painters of the
time. An interesting way to start a career…
Conclusion:
A Consenting Victim of Orientalism?
In a sense, Osman Hamdi was caught in a trap from
which he would have diicultly extricated himself.
It seems that he did try, though, the following year,
by exhibiting two diametrically opposed paintings
at the 1868 Salon. he irst corresponded perfectly
to the expectations from an Ottoman subject.
From bits and pieces that have survived (ill. 9), it
appears that he Jewish Trickster of Constantinople
1. Detail from J.-L.-Gérôme, L’Almée, 1863,
depicted a rather typical Oriental scene. A rather oil on canvas, 50.2 x 81.3 cm.
obscure magazine specializing in the reproduction Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio
of sketches, by the artists themselves, of their paint-
ings thus shows one of the characters of Hamdi’s
painting, in the form of a man in Oriental garb, providing a rather detailed description of that par-
seated cross-legged and playing a large tambourine ticular work, but also of the Trickster:
(ill. 10).77 As had been the case with his Zeybek, it
is almost certain that his Jewish Trickster was also Is Mr. Hamdy Osman a good Muslim, as his name sug-
inspired from images of ethnic “types” as they fre- gests? I have no doubt about it. However, much like
quently appeared in the illustrated press of the time he himself was content with accepting the spirit of the
(ills. 11 and 12), rather than from highly unlikely Koran in painting animated objects as banned in the
personal observations or recollections. Holy Book, I will take the liberty of advising him to
His second painting, however, was in no way thoroughly understand the spirit of his art instead of
Oriental: it was a portrait of a woman, a Madame sticking to the writ. he writ in painting is strokes and
de H… Once again, as the whereabouts of the illumination, in other words the naïve reproduction of
painting are unknown, we have to rely on a written lines and colours, without combining the general lines
description to try and visualize it. Although the with a larger sketch, and without combining colour
only such text I have been able to ind is extremely with shades. his may not be entirely Mr. Hamdy’s style,
condescending and patronizing in its appraisal of but it certainly is his tendency. He is the irst bearing
a “regenerated” Orient, it does have the merit of an Ottoman name who has exhibited paintings, and I
54 EDHEM ELDEM
9. O. Hamdi Bey, L’escamoteur juif à Constantinople (?), [he Jewish
Trickster of Costantinople], 1867. Private collection
would be happy to see him acquire an honorable, if not
great, fame as an artist.
He exhibits the portrait of a woman which, by its
outlook, may give an idea of the artist’s talent: the head
is awkwardly set; the hands, especially the right one,
holding a book, are not thoroughly done; the clothes
are drawn from a model, and the head lacks body. On
the other hand, the black velvet dress is well done, its
folds agreeable; the table, the carpet and the accessories
are rendered with care, but the best, according to me,
is the tapestry forming the background of the painting,
the yellow motifs are perfect and the glazed tones of the
paper so natural. But the Portrait of Mme de L. (sic) is
not that of the tapestry in her living room. he Jewish
Trickster of Constantinople has the same qualities and the
same defects. In front of a whitewashed wall, a poor Jew
kneels down with his sidekick doing tricks on a hand-
kerchief spread on the ground; in front of him are lined
for or ive men wearing Indian, Arab, Syrian, Turkish
costumes, a salad of costumes and types. On the left
10. O. Hamdi Bey, L’escamoteur juif à Constantinople, [he Jewish
Trickster of Costantinople], 1868.
Les Salons. Dessins autographes, 11 (10 July 1868), p. 2.
side, a woman in traditional garb chats with a soldier.
In the background, a hill raises its barren summit, while
the sky displays relections of the true Orient.
here is in this small painting an air of truth, but it
lacks seriousness. If Mr. Hamdi wants to paint the
Orient, he should draw man and nature wherever he
wishes; when he will master his style, he should seek in
his memory recollections of his faraway fatherland, and
he will do good work. Courage, courage! If the artist
inds this criticism too bitter, he should remember that
he alone represents his country’s artistic talent among
us; this feeling should encourage him and he should
know that I speak as a friend of the arts and as the
editor of a periodical that has chosen for its mission to
regenerate the Orient by triggering sympathy for it, and
by helping it discover itself.78
In all evidence, while at the same time yielding
to a market that expected him to paint things
“Turkish,” Osman Hamdi had decided that he
THE LIFE AND MIND
11. “Types de Constantinople,” Univers illustré (3 April 1869), p. 221.
12. “Types de Constantinople,” Univers illustré (3 April 1869),
p. 221. After a photograph by Abdullah Frères
would give himself a chance in a less marked,
more ordinary, more “normal” style. his would
probably explain that for some time—mostly in
the 1870s—he tried to paint landscapes and still
lives that had little, if anything, to do with the
Orientalist paintings that would end up sealing
his fame and his fate. It also probably explains that
O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0 55
throughout his career, he should have maintained
such a striking dualism and demarcation between
the Oriental scenes he exhibited and marketed,
and the purely western and rather plain style of
the portraits he would keep painting until the very
end of his life. Was he frustrated in his ambition
of becoming an artist “like everyone else” who
would have gained some recognition without
having to resort to themes and scenes supposed
to relect the reality of “his” world? We shall never
know for sure, but it is certainly tempting to see
in the evolution of his art the very strong incentive
of a market that pushed him in the direction of a
growing emphasis on Oriental motifs in line with
the purest Orientalist tradition.
It would probably be unfair and certainly incom-
plete to explain of this phenomenon as the unilat-
eral doing of western pressure. here is little doubt
that Osman Hamdi himself played an active part in
it by making decisive choices in this direction, such
as that of exhibiting abroad rather than in his home
country. He knew well, or maybe he ended up real-
izing, that adopting an Orientalist style while at the
56 EDHEM ELDEM
same time playing the card of the “native” artist was
the only viable chance he had of gaining access to
the major exhibitions of the time. What I hope to
have been able to demonstrate here is that beyond
the very rational aspect of his commitment to an
Orientalist style “bon pour l’Occident,” his formative
years in Paris played a crucial role in determining the
outlines of his career to come. From his experience
as an Oriental model for his master to his attempt
1
A. halasso, L’art ottoman, les peintres de Turquie (Paris: Librairie artistique
internationale, [1911]), pp. 21–22.
2
S. Reinach, “Hamdi Bey,” Revue archéologique, quatrième série, Vol. XV
(January–June, 1910), p. 408.
3
While Osman Hamdi has always acknowledged having been Boulanger’s
student, his presence at Gérôme’s workshop has always been assumed but
never documented. While he must obviously have been inluenced by
this major artist during his stay in Paris in the 1860s, it is probably safe to
assume that Hamdi was never exposed to his teaching. For more details, see,
E. Eldem, Osman Hamdi Bey Sözlüğü (Istanbul: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı,
2010), pp. 245–49.
4
S. Reinach, op. cit., pp. 407, 412.
5
Archives nationales (AN), F21 2136, dossier Hamdy-Bey, Albert Kaempfen,
director of the National Museums to Henry Roujon, director of Fine Arts
at the Ministry of Public Education and Fine Arts, February 10, 1893. On
this episode, see, E. Eldem, “An Ottoman Archaeologist Caught between
Two Worlds: Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910),” in D. Shankland, ed.,
Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: he Life
and Times of F. W. Hasluck, 1878-1920, Vol. I (Istanbul: Isis, 2004), pp.
140–44.
6
AN, F21 2136, dossier Hamdy-Bey, note concernant les deux tableaux
d‘Osman Hamdi Bey proposés au ministère, s.d., vers février 1893.
7
“he Royal Academy, 1903,” Magazine of Art, 1 (January, 1903), pp. 379,
383.
8
“he Royal Academy,” he Times (5 May 1906).
9
“he Royal Academy. I,” he Speaker (12 May 1906), p. 138.
10
R. Dircks, “he Royal Academy,” Art Journal (June, 1906), p. 164.
11
“Burlington House: First Notice,” he Academy (1 May 1909), p. 56.
12
E. Eldem, op.cit., pp. 314–17.
13
F. Adil, “Cinquante ans de peinture et sculpture turques,” La Turquie
kamâliste, 18 (April, 1937), p. 9.
14
A. Muhip Dranas, “Resimde Ümanizma. Birinci Devlet Resim ve Heykel
Sergisi Münasebetiyle,” Güzel Sanatlar, 2 (May, 1940), p. 137.
15
N. Berk, Türkiye’de Resim (Istanbul: Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi, 1943),
p. 23.
16
Ibid., p. 20.
17
C’est notamment le cas des articles d’A. Müfid Mansel, “Osman Hamdi
Bey,” Anatolia, IV (1959), pp. 189–93 et “Osman Hamdi Bey,” Belleten,
XXIV, 94 (1960), pp. 291–301.
18
M. Cezar, Sanatta Batı’ya Açılış ve Osman Hamdi (Istanbul: İş Bankası,
1971).
19
M. Cezar, Osman Hamdi, op. cit., pp. 308–09.
20
E. W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
21
Oryantalizm: Sömürgeciliğin Keşif Kolu (transl. Selahaddin Ayaz) (Istanbul:
Pınar, 1991); Oryantalizm (Doğubilim): Sömürgeciliğin Keşif Kolu (transl.
Nezih Uzel) (Istanbul: İrfan, 1998); Şarkiyatçılık: Batı’nın Şark anlayışları
(transl. Berna Ülner) (Istanbul: Metis, 2003). In actual fact, a first transla-
tion was published in 1982, but in a much more ‘Islamist’ context, which
at presenting one non-Orientalist bourgeois painting
and to his rather convincing recycling of Boulanger’s
and Gérôme’s works, it seems that it is at this early
stage of his career that Osman Hamdi learnt the
rules of the game with respect to the western artistic
world. hat is probably how he learnt and realized
that his Oriental identity gave him the opportu-
nity to emulate Orientalism while at the same time
fooling viewers into believing he was not.
considerably reduced its impact: Oryantalizm – Doğubilim: Sömürgeciliğin
Keşif Kolu (Istanbul: Pınar Yayınları, 1982).
22
L. Nochlin, “he Imaginary Orient,” Art in America, 71/5 (May, 1983),
pp. 118–31.
23
İ. Aksüğür Duben, “Osman Hamdi ve Orientalism,” Tarih ve Toplum,
Vol. 7, 41 (May, 1987), pp. 283–90.
24
İ. Aksüğür Duben, Türk Resmi ve Eleştirisi (Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi
Üniversitesi, 2007), p. 43.
25
V. K. Kortun, “Osman Hamdi Üzerine Yeni Notlar,” Tarih ve Toplum,
Vol. 7, 41 (May, 1987), pp. 281–82.
26
S. Germaner and Z. İnankur, Constantinople and the Orientalists (Istanbul:
Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2002), pp. 300–11.
27
E. Fetvacı, “An Orientalist Reconsidered: Osman Hamdi,” MA thesis,
Williams College, Massachusetts, 1996.
28
A. Ersoy, “Şarklı Kimliğin Peşinde. Osman Hamdi Bey ve Osmanlı
Kültüründe Oryantalizm,” Toplumsal Tarih, 119 (November, 2003), pp.
86–87.
29
Z. Çelik, “Speaking back to Orientalist Discourse,” in J. Beaulieu and M.
Roberts, eds, Orientalism’s Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography
(Durham: North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 19–41.
30
U. Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” he American Historical Review,
107, 3 (June, 2002), pp. 768–96, esp. p. 790.
31
W. K. Shaw, “he Paintings of Osman Hamdi and the Subversion of
Orientalist Vision,” in Ç. Kafescioğlu and L. hys-Şenocak, eds, Aptullah
Kuran İçin Yazılar. Essays in Honour of Aptullah Kuran (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi
Yayınları, 1999), pp. 423–34, particularly p. 431.
32
E. Eldem, “Osman Hamdi Bey ve Oryantalizm,” Dipnot, 2 (hiver-prin-
temps 2004), pp. 39-67.
33
I. Aksüğür Duben, “Osman Hamdi ve Orientalism,” op. cit., p. 287.
34
E. Fetvacı, “An Orientalist Reconsidered,” chapitre IV, op. cit., p. 5-7.
35
S. Germaner and Z. İnankur, op. cit., p. 301.
36
Loc. cit.
37
W. K. Shaw, “he Paintings of Osman Hamdi and the Subversion of
Orientalist Vision,” op. cit., p. 427.
38
Ibid., p. 430.
39
A. Humbert, “Le Japon”, Le Tour du Monde, 19 (1869), p. 402; E. Eldem,
“Ressamlar, Kaplumbağalar, Tarihçiler,” Toplumsal Tarih, 185 (May 2009),
pp. 20–30; E. Eldem, “Bir Ressam Doğuyor: Osman Hamdi Bey’in Sanat
Hayatının İlk Aşamaları,” Batı’ya Yolculuk. Türk Resminin 70 Yıllık Serüveni
(Istanbul: Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, 2009), pp. 16–41.
40
W. K. Shaw, “he Paintings of Osman Hamdi and the Subversion of
Orientalist Vision,” op. cit., p. 430; S. Germaner and Z. İnankur, op. cit., pp.
308–09; W. K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed. Museums, Archaeology, and the
Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (Berkeley-Los Angeles-
Londres: University of California Press, 2003), p. 124.
41
E. Eldem, op. cit., p. 325.
42
I know of only two exceptions where a message is blatantly present. he
irst is a portrait depicting his cousin Tevik reading the French daily Aurore
THE LIFE AND MIND O F O S M A N H A M D I B E Y, 1 8 4 2– 1 9 1 0
and inscribed with the following dedication in French: “To Tevik, his
dear Dreyfusard cousin, from his cousin O. Hamdy, also Dreyfusard.” (E.
Eldem, op. cit., pp. 177–80). he other, exhibited in Berlin in 1901 and in
London in 1903 is the famous painting known as the Mihrab, as Mustafa
Cezar named it in 1971, but in fact named Genesis (Genèse) and depicting
his daughter Leyla (and not his wife as some have claimed), pregnant and
seated on a Koran stand with her back to a prayer niche, with sacred books
scattered at her feet (E. Eldem, op. cit., pp. 489–94).
43
I shall give as an example, the following comment published in 1909
in London, where Osman Hamdi had exhibited both the heologian and
the Tomb of the Children: “Among the genre pictures, one re-discovery is to
be made of great interest, the work of Osman Hamdy Bey, who exhibited
one picture, Jeune Emir à l’Etude, in 1906. A Constantinopolitan, he wisely
treats Oriental subjects in a manner reminding Englishmen of Lewis. He
has the ine Oriental feeling for the harmony of vivid colour more prop-
erly Persian than Turkish, and he is capable of a digniied pathos not to
be found in Lewis’s work. he graduated harmony in his lesser work, Le
héologien, from the brilliant turquoise wall-tiles, the clear yellow of the
igure’s silken coat and the gold diapered white cotton of his shirt, through
the mother-of-pearl ornaments of the Koran-stand, to the faded hues of
the worn prayer-rug on which it stands, could only have been seen by an
Oriental; while the material of the highly-glazed wall-tiles is exceedingly
skillfully given according to European methods. He fails here in the lesh
tints and modelling of the face, but succeeds much better in the igure of his
other, iner picture, Le Tombeau des Enfants. In this it would be diicult to
surpass the richness and harmony of his colouring. It is comparable to some
of the inest periods of Persian illumination. he full, purplish-ultramarine
of the wall-tiles, with their neutral tinted frieze, the browniesh madder of
the tablets depending from them, the little grey stone tombs, with their
decorations in faint colour, the Persian leopard’s skin, the clear ochre of the
rush-matting, the greyish ochre of the carved entry, with the note of red
in the socket of the taper, and of sanguine in the roof of the entry, form a
perfect harmony of brilliant contrasts. he material of the somewhat spoiled
tiles, of the stonework, of the rush-matting, and of a covering to one of
the tombs are admirably rendered. It is to be hoped that this beautiful and
interesting example of hybrid art will not be allowed to leave this country”
(“Burlington House: First Notice,” he Academy (1 May 1909), p. 56.
44
E. J. Poynter to Osman Hamdi, April 1906. Author’s collection.
45
As suggested by Zeynep Çelik (Z. Çelik, op. cit.).
46
As suggested by Wendy Shaw (W. K. Shaw, “he Paintings of Osman
Hamdi and the Subversion of Orientalist Vision,” op. cit.).
47
A. Kiamil, “L’exposition des Beaux-Arts à hérapia,” L’Osmanli (16
September 1880).
48
A. Kiamil, “L’exposition des Beaux-Arts,” L’Osmanli (11 April 1881).
49
“he Royal Academy. I,” he Speaker (12 May 1906), p. 138.
50
An example is the commentary published in the Journal du dimanche
on the Young Believer Reading the Bible (sic) by Hamdy-Bey (from
Constantinople): “Did we not tell you that the modern mind is increas-
ingly penetrating the Muslim world? Here is one of the best paintings of the
Salon, realized by one of them, Hamdy-Bey, a student of Gérôme who lives
in Constantinople. It is from there that he kindly sent us the permission
to reproduce his work, which is very bright, very luminous, and represents
a young Turk studying the holiest of all books. he character’s feeling and
the body’s overall pose are perfectly rendered; but who will tell us what
this young student is thinking about ?” (L’Amateur, «Au Salon des artistes
français,» Le Journal du Dimanche. Revue hebdomadaire de la famille, 3316,
16 July 1905, p. 453).
51
F. Jahyer, Étude sur les beaux-arts. Salon de 1865, par Félix Jahyer (Paris:
Dentu, 1865), pp. 106–07. Another critic provides additional clues: “he
character, wearing a blue burnous with gold ornaments and a sort of red
drape, holds a sword in his right hand and presses his left hand against the
parapet of a terrace” (M. Chaumelin, “Notes sur le Salon de 1865,” Tribune
artistique et littéraire du Midi, 9/1, July 1865, p. 121).
52
“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 5%
of the artists in the Modern Art section are women, but 85% of the nudes
are female,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Girls, last accessed on
57
5 March 2014).
53
Femme turque. Publication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecte,
gravure et lithographie des artistes vivants, des envois des pensionnaires de
l’Académie de France à Rome et des grands prix de 1865, exposés au Palais des
Champs-Élysées le 1er mai 1866 (Paris: Charles de Mourgues Frères, 1866),
p. 114.
54
F. Dubourg, “Salon de 1866. Troisième article,” Le Mémorial diploma-
tique. Journal international, politique, littéraire et inancier (1866), p. 349.
55
La halte des Tchinganés (Campement des Bohémiens), Le Zeïbek à l’afût
(Zeïbek faisant le guet), La mort du Zeïbek (Zeïbek tué). Exposition universelle
de 1867 à Paris. Catalogue général, publié par la commission impériale. 1ère
livraison. Œuvres d’art. Groupe I. Classes 1 à 5. (Deuxième édition, revue et
corrigée), Paris, Dentu, [1867], pp. 234–36; La Turquie à l’Exposition uni-
verselle de 1867. Ouvrage publié par les soins et sous la direction de S. Exc.
Salaheddin Bey, commissaire impérial ottoman, près l’Exposition universelle
(Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1867), pp. 141–42.
56
Exposition universelle de 1867 à Paris, pp. 234–36.
57
La Turquie à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, p. 142.
58
L’Artiste, new series, Vol. III (1858), p. 188. For a detailed bibliography,
see, M.-M. Aubrun, “Gustave Boulanger, peintre éclectique,” Bulletin de la
Société de l’histoire de l’art français (1986), pp. 167–256, n° 36.
59
G. Çakmak, “Conveying the Drama as it Exists: Osman Hamdi’s Zeibek
at Watch (1867) and Nineteenth-Century French Painting,” presented at the
colloquium on “Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands” organized
by the Pennsylvania University Museum (http://www.ottomanlands.com/
sites/default/iles/pdf/Cakmakessay_0.pdf, last accessed on 5 March 2014).
60
Wallace Collection, London, P 307.
61
Un corps de garde turc sur la route de Smyrne à Magnésie, Musée Condé,
Chantilly, PE 474.
62
G. Çakmak, op. cit., p. 13.
63
A. Busquet, “Salon de 1857,” Le Portefeuille de l’amateur. Journal artistique
contenant un cours de dessin gradué (1857), p. 31.
64
L’Artiste, new series, Vol. III (1858), p. 188.
65
  L. Auvray,  Exposition des beaux-arts. Salon de 1859 (Paris: A. Taride,
1859), p. 30.
66 T. Gautier, “Salon de 1857. III,” L’Artiste, new series, Vol. I (1857), pp.
228–29.
67
Arabe guettant un lion or Arabe à l’afût. Musée du Louvre, département
des Arts graphiques, MI 892 recto.
68
C. Bauchal, “Visite aux ateliers de Berlin,” La lumière. Revue de la pho-
tographie, Beaux-arts, héliographie, sciences, II/33 (7 August 1852), p. 132.
69
Zouaves en embuscade, musée de Carpentras. “Une embuscade dans le
désert – Épisode de la révolte d’une tribu algérienne (Photographie de M.
Goupil, d’après le tableau de M. Janet-Lange),” L’univers illustré, 1104 (20
May 1876), p. 325.
70
Guetteur gaulois, Musée Rolin, Autun.
71
Eclaireurs gaulois. Exhibited at the 1870 Salon and now at the Musée des
beaux-arts, Bordeaux.
72
M. du Camp, Les beaux-arts à l’Exposition universelle de 1855. Peinture –
Sculpture (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1855), p. 130.
73
C. Texier, Asie Mineure. Description géographique, historique et archéolo-
gique des provinces et des villes de la Chersonnèse d’Asie (Paris: Firmin Didot
frères, ils et Cie, 1862), pp. 281–82.
74
A. de Moustier, “Voyage de Constantinople à Éphèse, par l’intérieur
de  l’Asie Mineure, Bithynie, Phrygie, Lydie, Ionie,” Le Tour du monde.
Nouveau journal des voyages (1864/1), p. 237.
75
50.2 × 81.3 cm, he Dayton Art Institute, Dayton. Gift of Mr. Robert
Badenhop, inv, 1951.15.
76
L. des Cars, D. de Font-Réaulx and É. Papet, eds, Jean-Léon Gérôme
(1824–1904). L’histoire en spectacle (Paris: ESFP-Musée d’Orsay, 2010), pp.
266–69.
77
Les Salons. Dessins autographes, 11 (10 July 1868), p. 2.
78
[Charles Brun], “L’Orient au Salon de peinture de Paris de 1868.
Deuxième et dernier article,” La Question d’Orient. Journal hebdomadaire,
politique et inancier, 1/ß