Art Section III: Artists in Transit/Young Woman Reading

Why has global travel been important to many artists?

It is a way to gain inspiration and blend their customs with those from other cultures

When did it become common for artists to travel for the sake of art?

Nineteenth century

What topic did the artists in this section deal with?

How global flows of images and information affect personal identity and inner states of mind

What is the setting of Young Woman Reading?

A brightly lit room

What is the woman in the painting doing?

Kneeling in front of a bookstand and reading the Qur'an

What is the woman wearing?

A fashionable nineteenth-century dress in pale yellow silk and a red-orange head covering

What does the wall behind the woman look like?

It has repeating blue and white tiles that create a complex pattern

What do we see on the left side of the painting?

A view of a tree-filled garden through a metal screen

What decorates the bookstand?

A mosaic of mother-of-pearl squares and a floral cloth

What sits on top of the cloth?

A decorated manuscript with writing in Arabic

What does Young Woman Reading represent?

A modern, active, and education Muslim woman from the late 1800s

What was Young Woman Reading a product of?

The artist's journeys from Turkey to Paris and back home

Where and when was Osman Hamdi Bey born?

Istanbul in 1842

What kind of household was Hamdi raised in?

A highly educated and westernized household

When was the peak of the Ottoman Empire?

Sixteenth century

What area did the Ottoman Empire cover at its peak?

North Africa to the Persian Gulf

What modern day countries did the Ottoman Empire encompass?

Turkey, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova

Why had the Ottoman Empire become less powerful by the mid-nineteenth century?

European expansion into North Africa and West Asia

Who was Hamdi's father?

İbrahim Edhem Pasha

Where was Edhem born?

Chios

What happened to Edhem as a child?

He was orphaned during the Greek War of Independence, sold into slavery, and adopted by a powerful Ottoman admiral

Where was Edhem educated?

France

Who did Edhem teach?

Sultan Abdulmeçid

What position did Edhem eventually obtain?

Trade minister

When did Edhem sent Osman Hamdi to Paris?

1860

Why did Hamdi go to Paris?

To attend law school

Who was Hamdi's art teacher?

Gustave Boulanger

Who else inspired Hamdi's style?

Jean-Léon Gérôme

What genre did Boulanger and Gérôme work in?

Orientalism

What did Orientalist paintings represent?

An imagined, Western view of "the Orient"

What was the Orient?

The Muslim-majority regions of North Africa and the Middle East

What made Hamdi unique within the genre of Orientalism?

He was one of the few Muslim painters to produce work in a European Orientalist style

Where and when did Hamdi first exhibit his work publicly?

Paris Salon in 1866

What painting did Hamdi exhibit at the Paris Salon?

Femme turque

What was an important part of Hamdi's French training?

Learning to paint human anatomy by studying plaster casts, classical sculptures, and live models

What do some Islamic artistic traditions ban?

Depiction of the human figure

What is the hadith?

A collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad

What is proscribed in the hadith?

Making images of holy figures and living beings

What has varied in different Muslim traditions?

Interpretation and application of the hadith

What was the late Ottoman court's view on depicting humans?

They did not prohibit it and even encouraged the development of European-style figure painting

Which European artists were hired by sultans?

Ivan Aivazovsky and Stanisław Chlebowski

Which other Ottomans of Hamdi's generation also painted the human figure in a Western style?

Halil Pasha, Şeker Ahmed Pasha, and Sarkis Diranian

What museum holds several of Halil's drawings of male and female models?

The Sakıp Sabancı Museum

Where did Hamdi go in 1868?

Baghdad

What position did Hamdi hold in Baghdad?

Government administrator

What enabled Hamdi to use the honorific title Bey?

He worked in administrative roles for the rest of his career

What is Hamdi known for today?

His art work and his career as a museum director and archaeologist

What position did Hamdi acquire in 1877?

Inaugural director of the Imperial Museum of Antiquities

What did the Imperial Museum collect?

Coins, sculpture, and other artifacts from ancient Anatolia

What did Hamdi do in 1884?

He helped enact new export regulations that made it harder for foreign archaeologists to export antiquities excavated on Ottoman soil

What position did Hamdi hold after 1880?

Palace painter to Sultan Abdülhamid II

What school did Hamdi become director of in 1882?

Academy of Fine Arts

What did Hamdi oversee?

Excavations that expanded the collections of the Imperial Museum

Until when did Hamdi direct the Imperial Museum?

His death in 1910

What scenes did Hamdi paint?

Everyday life in public and private spaces around Istanbul

Who did Hamdi use as models?

Himself and his family members

What two traditions did Hamdi blend?

Ottoman and French traditions

What are some detailed items of Ottoman material and religious culture in Young Woman Reading?

Qur'an stand, carpet, metalwork, blue and white tiles, and incense burner

What do these detailed items reinforce?

A sense of direct, observed reality

What does the painting celebrate?

A worshipper's personal relationship with Islam

What faction was Hamdi a part of within the Ottoman government?

A modernizing, progressive faction

What are some of Hamdi's paintings that depict figures reading or discussing the Qur'an?

Clerics Talking before a Mosque Entrance (1890) and A Young Emir Studying (1905)

What are some of Hamdi's paintings that depict women as active in modern Turkish life?

At the Mosque Door (1890) and Two Musician Girls (1880)

What is a yashmak?

A gauzy head and face covering popular in the late Ottoman period

What has Edhem Eldem claimed about Hamdi's art?

It also spoke a European visual language

Where were Hamdi's artworks most frequently exhibited?

France, Germany, Britain, and the United States

What venue was Hamdi's work shown at in 1893?

World's Columbian Exposition

What role did Hamdi's paintings take on due to their international audience?

A cross-cultural communicative role as correctives to the fantasies of Western Orientalist painters

What was Orientalism in nineteenth-century Europe?

A set of ideas about how to represent "the Orient"

How did Orientalist painters often depict "the Orient"?

As exotic and different from Europe

Who were the audiences of Orientalist paintings?

Middle-class and elite consumers in Western Europe and the US

What do Orientalist paintings often look like?

Visually appealing, highly detailed, and almost photorealistic

What is an example of scenes that white male Orientalist painters would never have been able to see?

Interactions in the harem

What is the harem?

The female-only part of a private household

What do paintings of the harem suggest about Orientalist works?

Many of them were works of imagination, not factual observation

What did Jules-Antoine Castagnary say in response to the Paris Salon of 1864?

That Orientalist painters had the desire to "run away from the world around them, to escape the real and the present"

What opportunity did paintings like Young Woman Reading offer to Hamdi?

A chance to make the Western view of "the Orient" more complex

What did Zeynep Çelik argue in her article "Speaking Back to Orientalist Discourse"?

Hamdi's art reveals a dialogue between cultures rather than a one-sided imposition of European expectations

What did Hamdi do by using the Orientalist style?

Resist negative narratives created by Europeans and present his subjects as human beings who don't fit the stereotypes created by European painters

How does Young Woman Reading resist European expectations and views?

The woman is modest and fashionable, educated and absorbed in study, and exists in the modern world

What contributed to Hamdi's portrayal of the woman in the painting?

His knowledge of contemporary Ottoman life, his youthful education abroad, and his correspondence with people all over the world