Footnotes

Provenance
Purchased directly from the artist circa 1910.
Thence by descent.

Literature
Mustafa Cezar, Sanatta Batı'ya Açılış ve Osman Hamdi, Istanbul, 1995, vol. II, p. 665, illustrated.


It would not be too presumptuous to claim that Osman Hamdi Bey needs no introduction. The high demand for his paintings and the prices they have reached at international auctions have earned him a global reputation unequalled by any other Ottoman or Turkish artist. However, as his identity as a painter often overshadows his rich and diverse career, it may be useful to briefly consider his remarkable life.

Hamdi was born in 1842 to Edhem Bey, soon to be pasha, a man with a rather extraordinary destiny. A survivor of the infamous Chios massacre of 1822, he was brought up as a slave in the household of Husrev Pasha, who sent him to Paris for education. Upon his return, he started a bureaucratic career that would eventually lead him to several diplomatic and ministerial positions, including that of Grand Vizier in 1877. A firm partisan of Western modernity, Edhem Pasha sent his son to Paris in 1860, where he began his artistic education in the studio of Gustave Boulanger and under the probable influence of Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose art and presence as a teacher dominated the Parisian art world at the time. The impact of both of these masters is evident in the style and subject matter of Osman Hamdi's pictures, which mirror, in many respects, the Orientalist subjects that were so successful in Europe at the time. Hamdi would live in Paris for eight years, evidently preferring painting to the study of law he was sent for and never completed.

Back in the Ottoman lands, Hamdi Bey began a kaleidoscopic career with frequent ups and downs, which would see him be, at various times, a bureaucrat, archaeologist, museum director, architect, poet, writer, and musician. He was appointed director of the Imperial Museum in 1881; this was a life changing event, as he would hold this position until his death in 1910, turning a glorified storehouse of antiquities into a world-class archaeology museum. His efficient and innovative management of the museum and of the administration of antiquities in the Empire brought him well-deserved fame and recognition in the international circles of archaeology and museology.

One of the striking aspects of his personality was his 'super-Westernised' character and style, as witnessed both in his private and professional life. He took up a prominent position in both late 19th century French and Ottoman intellectual circles and was married twice to French women. A speaker of French at home and at work, his family life was very much that of the French upper bourgeoisie. This strong cultural penchant was also reflected in his art, which bore all the marks of Western Orientalism, albeit with much softer undertones. The Hearth is one of the earliest examples we know of this style, based on the depiction of a timeless Orient, which would become the artist's trademark until the end of his life.

Hamdi painted The Hearth at the lowest point of his already shaky career as a civil servant. In January 1879, he had resigned from his position as mayor of the district of Pera; in May he left Istanbul to accompany his father who had been appointed ambassador to Vienna. After a week in the Austrian capital, he returned home via Venice. Back in Istanbul, having apparently lost any interest and hope in a bureaucratic career, he turned to painting, thus opening one of the most productive phases of his artistic career. Most of the works he signed during this period evoked the restrained intimacy of the harem; the first of this series seems to have been the present work. In his capacity as an Orientalist painter, moreover, he has long been considered a curiosity within the genre. Too Turkish for some, too French for others, Osman Hamdi and his works have been framed by the politics of these debates. Singled out for particular attention have been the artist's harem pictures, featuring one or more women engaged in their daily indoor and outdoor pursuits. Interpreted as both pointed commentaries on misconceptions about the harem institution in the West and dependable documents from an "insider" from the East, the actual details of these compositions have often been ignored.

Given that the names of Osman Hamdi Bey's works can be documented only when they made it into exhibition catalogues in his lifetime, The Hearth, which was never exhibited, derives its name from the fireplace that dominates the canvas. A young woman delicately hands a cup of coffee to a pensive man seated by the hearth. Dating from 1879, this painting has the particularity of being the first known example of Hamdi Bey's harem scenes, of which he would paint a great number in the following years. A common feature of these depictions of life in the harem is that they use a 'soft' form of Orientalism, avoiding cruder Western clichés, and favouring instead a sense of domestic intimacy mixed with submission. The painting bears elements of historicism, as revealed by the man's impressive headgear, known as a mücevveze, particular to sultans and dignitaries of the highest ranks in the eighteenth century. His pose suggests leisure and relaxation, as does the long tobacco pipe, or çubuk, lying in front of him, and the coffee he is about to enjoy, typically served in a tiny handleless porcelain cup (fincan), placed in a gilded metal holder (zarf). The woman – most likely a concubine or a slave – clad in a rich interior dress, stands by him in a respectful and subdued attitude.

This painting is one of the first occasions for Osman Hamdi to try out some of the elements that would become his trademark in the following years and decades. The setting is a carefully studied, but imaginary, Ottoman interior with a magnificent fireplace similar in form to those that can still be admired today in the harem of Topkapı palace, while the tiles are freely borrowed from the mosque of Rüstem Pasha. The typically Oriental niches on either side of the hearth, the shelves on a muqarnas cornice and the hexagonal floor tiles complete this architectural ensemble. A variety of objects and textiles break the austerity of the decor: on the left shelf, a large İznik plate stands next to a tulip vase (laledan); on the right, a coffeepot (kahvedan); inside the niche on the left, an inkwell (hokka) and a reed pen (kalem); a few carpets and cushions with Caucasian motifs bring additional warmth and colour to the scene.

Perhaps the most interesting decorative element is the wooden calligraphic panel hanging to the left of the fireplace. Behind a rather banal and predictable aspect, it reveals an exciting private joke, as the calligraphy spells out the artist's name – Osman Hamdi – in an intricate Kufic script, crowned by '1295', the date of the Hegira corresponding to 1879. This is the first known example of the 'secret signatures' Hamdi Bey enjoyed hiding in many of his compositions. More often than not, the joke remained private and the signature, secret, given that his paintings were generally purchased by foreigners.

When placed in the larger context of Osman Hamdi's rich oeuvre, The Hearth stands as a pioneering work, where he tried out for the first time some of the most typical and successful features of his future art. His extraordinary skill at rendering the soft glow of panels of İznik tiles finds here its first expression; the other elements, the fireplace, the plate, the carpets, the coffeepot, would all reappear in subsequent works. Most importantly, however, this painting stands as the artist's first and very successful attempt at taming Orientalism and turning it into one of the trademarks of his oeuvre.

We are grateful to Edhem Eldem, Ph.D for preparing this catalogue entry.


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