The Mosque

Osman Hamdi Bey has also painted a few landscapes, dated to 1870s. One of these is The Mosque. A typical Eastern small street is surrounded on both sides by buildings whose façades with windows and bay windows are partly seen. In the background is a minaret under the blue sky and at the center are the shopkeepers and their customers.

One of the figures on the street is a young woman in a yellow dress, sitting with her back to the mosque’s wall and with a pot full of the merchandise she is selling in front. The silver bracelets on her left wrist attract attention due to their luster achieved with the application of white paint. Another salesman is sitting behind wooden shades in his shop. In the shaded part of the painting an old man is sitting on a stool and a woman on the ground. The profile of a black sherbet seller with a pannier on his back is half in the shadows.

Osman Hamdi Bey returned to Istanbul from Paris in 1868 and was sent to Baghdad in 1869 as the Provincial Director of Foreign Affairs under Midhat Pasha where he would live for two years. His landscapes depict prominent buildings of Baghdad and it can be argued that The Mosque also depicts a scenery from the same city.