Hotspur🏳️🌈🇺🇦"The Petitioner," Osman Hamdi Bey, 19th Century.
Osman Hamdi (1842-1910) was quite a fellow; a museum curator, art expert, archaeologist, writer, and all-around intellectual as well as being an influential painter.
Son of a high-ranking official in the Ottoman Empire, he studied art and art history in Paris, before returning to the Ottoman Empire and serving in various official capacities before being named the director of the Imperial Museum. There he worked to modernize archaeology and prevent the smuggling of artifacts out of the country. And all the time, kept on painting.
His work seems to copy the "orientalism" of European artists, which generates controversy today, as some view it as racist. But his work depicts Ottoman culture and tends to show his subjects (often modeled by family members) in active and intellectual roles. He's now seen as subverting Orientalism for his own purposes.
From the Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi, Istanbul.
damian entwistle
S.v. N.Sönmez
EshaHaber
Kocaeli Haberleri
