Osman Hamdi Bey
Osman Hamdi Bey, (1842 İstanbul - 24 February 1910 İstanbul) was a prominent and pioneering Turkish painter. He was also an accomplished archaeologist, and is considered as the pioneer of the profession of museum curatorship in Turkey, and is the founder of İstanbul Archaeology Museum and of the İstanbul Academy of Fine Arts ((TR)Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, today a part of Mimar Sinan University).
Although born into a family of the ruling class of the Ottoman Empire (he was the son of İbrahim Ethem Pasha, a former sadrazam), he went to primary school in the popular İstanbul quarter of Beşiktaş, after which he studied law, first in İstanbul as of 1856, and then in Paris as of 1860. During his nine years in Paris, the international capital of arts, he showed a keen interest for the artistic events of his day. As aside his studies in law, he took up courses in painting in the workshops of a number of well-known painters. Once back in Turkey (1869), he has been assigned to the foreign relations department of the Ottoman province of Baghdad. In 1871, he was back in İstanbul, where he was made the vice-director of the Protocol Office of the Palace. During the 1870's, he worked at several assignments in the upper echelons of the Ottoman bureaucracy.
His true career can be said to have begun with his delegation as the director of the Empire Museum (Müze-i Humayun), that depended directly to the Palace, in 1881. Using his position there as a leverage, he founded the İstanbul Academy of Fine Arts in 1883, of which he became the first dean. In 1884, he oversaw the promulgation of a Regulation prohibiting historical artifacts from being smuggled abroad (Asar-ı Atîka Nizamnamesi), a giant step in constituting a legal framework in the matter. Representatives or middlemen of the European Powers of the 19th century had turned smuggling of artifacts with historical value from within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire (which, it must be remembered, comprised the geographies of ancient Greek and Mesopotamian civilizations, among others) into a routine activity since decades, often resorting to shadily obtained licences or bribes, to impoverish the original locations of these and to garnish museums in European capitals.
He conducted the first scientifically based archaeological researches done by a Turkish team. His digs included sites as varied as the Commagene tomb-sanctuary in Nemrut Dağı in southeastern Anatolia (a top tourist's venue in Turkey and a UNESCO World Heritage Site today, within the Adıyaman Province), the Hekate Sanctuary in Lagina in southwestern Anatolia (also much visited, and within the Muğla Province today), as well as in Sidon in Lebanon. The sarcophagus he discovered in Sidon (among which, the so-called Sarcophagus of Alexander the Great) are still considered as jewels among archeological findings. To lodge these, he had started laying the ground for what is today the İstanbul Archaeology Museum as of 1881, which was officially opened in 1891 under his directorship.
In the last decades of his life, he has put his efforts on improving this museum, and also concentrated on his activities as a painter. He lived in the family mansion in the village of Eskihisar, near Gebze, a district of Kocaeli Province at a short ride from İstanbul, that he had had extended. His house has been restored in 1982 and is open to visitors today as Osman Hamdi Bey Museum. He also made frequent excursions, highly beneficial for inspiration, as reflected in his paintings, to another mansion he had had built during the Lagina excavations in the town of Turgut adjacent to the archaeological site (which today, is a municipality in Muğla Province, with Osman Hamdi Bey's centenary house still standing). He died on 24 February 1910 in another family residence, this one situated in the Kuruçeşme quarter of İstanbul.
His paintings, in which he wisely and skillfully employed Oriental elements, have since been included in many private or public collections in Turkey and abroad.
He is the great-uncle of another famous name in Turkey. The mother of Cemal Reşit Rey, one of the five pioneers of classical music in Turkey (called the 'Turkish Five') in the first half of the 20th century, was his niece. It is notable indeed that his family produced a considerable number of notable people. Halil Ethem Eldem (the surname "Eldem" has been adopted by the family with the civil records reform by the nascent Republic of Turkey in 1928) took up the archaeology museum after Osman Hamdi Bey's death and has also been a deputy for ten years under in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Sedat Hakkı Eldem is a remarkable architect who left is imprint on the architectural school of the early years of the Republic. Yet another son, İsmail Galip Bey, is considered as the founder of numismatics as a scientific discipline in Turkey. Later generations of the family also produced illustrious names.
The Tortoise Trainer
His 1906 painting, "The Tortoise Trainer", has recently broken a record in Turkey by being sold for the amount of 3,5 million Dollars in December 2004. The painting expresses a sarcastic innuendo on the painter's own view of his style of work compared to those of his collaborators and apprentices, and is also a reference to the historical fact of tortoises having being been employed for illuminative and decorative purposes, by placing candles on the shell, in evening outings during the Tulip Era in the Ottoman Empire in early 18th century. The painting has been acquired by the Suna-İnanç Kıraç Foundation and as currently exhibited in the Pera Museum in İstanbul, a part of this foundation.
For another painting by Osman Hamdi Bey, see the article on Milas carpets and rugs.
