Artist

Osman Hamdi Bey

Osman Hamdi Bey, the eldest son of Grand Vizier İbrahim Edhem Paşa, was born in Istanbul. After primary school, he continued his education at the Public Servants Training School, which was established to train clerks to work in government. In 1860, while he was a clerk in the Translation Office, his father sent him to Paris to study law. During his time there, he attended Gustave Boulanger’s painting lessons and, according to the records of the Paris Salon Exhibitions, was also a student of Isidore Pils. Influenced by Boulanger, and the celebrated Orientalist painter of the time, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Osman Hamdi Bey painted Oriental tableaus, which were exhibited in Paris and London. Upon his return to Istanbul in 1869, he was sent to Baghdad in his new role as the Provincial Director for Foreign Nationals’ Affairs. He resigned from civil service in 1878 to devote himself entirely to painting, and in 1881 he was appointed the director of the Imperial Museum (the Istanbul Archaeological Museums). He also assumed directorship of the Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1882. In 1884 he rewrote the Antiquities Statute, an essential step toward the legal protection and preservation of historical artefacts in Ottoman lands.