1842 -1910 · Istanbul, Paris and Ottoman modernity

Ottoman interiors, archaeological erudition and critical eye make Osman Hamdi Bey an essential painter and founder of institutions.

Osman Hamdi Bey was born in Istanbul in 1842 and died there in 1910. Sent to Paris to study law, he also trained in painting with Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger. Back in the Ottoman Empire, he led an exceptional career as a painter, archaeologist, administrator and founder of institutions. Director of the Imperial Museum, he organized archaeological collections and contributed to the protection of heritage; he also founded the Istanbul School of Fine Arts. He also founded the Istanbul School of Fine Arts. His paintings employ the academic precision learned in Paris, but gave Ottoman interiors, objects and figures a complexity absent from many European orientalists. The Turtle Trainer, exhibited in Paris in 1906, shows an old man with a ney and a small drum observing turtles in the green mosque of Bursa. The image, inspired by an old engraving, can be read as an ironic meditation on the slowness of reform and education. Reading the Koran combines architecture, calligraphy and scholarly concentration without reducing the scene to exoticism. The Reading of the Koran combines architecture, calligraphy and scholarly concentration without reducing the scene to exoticism. The Reading of the Koran combines architecture, calligraphy and scholarly concentration without reducing the scene to exoticism. The "Osman Hamdi Bey" selection notably compares The Turtle Trainer and The Reading of the Koran. Its reading favors atmosphere.

Osman Hamdi turns the orientalist gaze around: he uses academic precision to question from within knowledge, reform and the representation of the Ottoman world.