Osman Hamdi Bey

Osman Hamdi Bey was one of the most talented Ottoman intellectuals during the Tanzimat period. He was an archaeologist, museum curator, painter, and first head of municipality of Kadikoy district in Istanbul. He was the son of a grand vizier, Ibrahim Ethem Pasha, and born in 1842 in Istanbul. He went to primary school in Besiktas, and then studied law in Istanbul and Paris. However, he decided to pursue his interest in painting instead, and trained under French orientalist painters Jean-Leon Gerome and Gustave Boulanger. He showed a keen interest for the artistic events of his day, and also met many of the Young Ottomans in Paris. He returned to Istanbul in 1869, and married his first wife Marie, a French woman. He was sent to Baghdad as part of the administrative team of Midhat Pasha, a leading reformer among the Young Ottomans. In 1871, he returned to Istanbul, and worked in various positions in the Ottoman bureaucracy. He also started his archaeological career, and conducted excavations in Nemrut, Sidon, Tyre, and Mount Athos. He founded the Istanbul Archaeology Museums and the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts, and became the first modern archaeologist and museum curator in Turkey. He also painted many orientalist scenes, depicting the Ottoman society and culture. His most famous painting is The Tortoise Trainer, which shows a man trying to teach tortoises to play musical instruments. He married his second wife Naile Hanım in 1884, and had six children with her. He died of a heart attack in 1910, and was buried in Gedikpasa, Istanbul. He is regarded as the founding father of both archaeology and the museum curator's profession in Turkey, and a prominent and pioneering painter of the Ottoman Empire.