archaeologist painter writer art expert museographer
Osman Hamdi was born on December 30, 1842 in Istanbul, Turkey. He was the son of Ibrahim Edhem Pasha, an Ottoman Grand Vizier (in office in 1877-1878). Osman Hamdi was the brother of Halil Edhem Eldem and İsmail Galib Bey, considered the founder of numismatics as a scientific discipline in Turkey.
Osman Hamdi went to primary school in the popular Istanbul quarter of Beşiktaş; after which he studied Law, first in Istanbul in 1856 and then in Paris in 1860. However, he decided to pursue his interest in painting instead, left the Law program, and trained under French orientalist painters Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger.
During his nine-year stay in Paris, Osman Hamdi showed a keen interest for the artistic events of his day. Hamdi exhibited three paintings at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle. Their titles were "Repose of the Gypsies", "Black Sea Soldier Lying in Wait", and "Death of the Soldier".
In 1871, Osman Hamdi returned to Istanbul, as the vice-director of the Protocol Office of the Palace. During the 1870s, he worked on several assignments in the upper echelons of the Ottoman bureaucracy.
An important step in his career was his assignment as the director of the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümayun) in 1881. He used his position as museum director to develop the museum and rewrite the antiquities laws and to create nationally sponsored archaeological expeditions. In 1882, he instituted and became director of the Academy of Fine Arts (now Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University).
In 1884, Hamdi oversaw the promulgation of a Regulation prohibiting historical artifacts from being smuggled abroad (Asar-ı Atîka Nizamnamesi), a giant step in constituting a legal framework of preservation of the antiquities.
He also conducted the first scientific based archaeological researches done by a Turkish team. His digs included sites as varied as the Commagene tomb-sanctuary in Nemrut Dağı in southeastern Anatolia (a top tourist's venue in Turkey and a UNESCO World Heritage Site today, within the Adıyaman Province), the Hekate sanctuary in Lagina in southwestern Anatolia (much less visited, and within the Muğla Province today), and Sidon in Lebanon.
To lodge his the sarcophagi which he discovered, he started building what is today the Istanbul Archaeology Museum in 1881. The museum officially opened in 1891 under his directorship.
Throughout his professional career as museum and academy director, Osman Hamdi continued to paint in the style of his teachers, Gérôme and Boulanger. Moreover, Osman Hamdi was both a painter and author. His paintings and the books he authored dealing with themes of archaelogy, travel and folk customs in the Middle East.
Osman Hamdi died on February 24, 1910 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Osman Hamdi was best known as the founder of Istanbul Archaeology Museums and of İstanbul Academy of Fine Arts, known today as the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts. He was regarded as the pioneer of the museum curator's profession in Turkey.
Besides, having been a prominent and pioneering painter, his most notable work was "The Tortoise Trainer".
Hamdi was also an accomplished archaeologist. The sarcophagi he discovered in Sidon, are considered among the worldwide jewels of archaeological findings.
Girl Who Fits the Vase
Naile Hanim's Portrait
The Tortoise Trainer
Chest
Gun Salesman
Girl Reciting Qu'ran
Theologist
The Musician Girl
Tavla Playing Zeybek
Portrait
Girl with Yellow Ribbon
Ladies Taking a Walk
Mihrap
The Carpet Merchant
Kokona Despina
The Lady Who Haves Her Hair Combed
Two Young Girls Visiting a Shrine
At The Mosque Entrance
The Petitioner
A Lady of Constantinople
Osman Hamdi met his first wife Marie, a French woman, in Paris when he was a student. After receiving his father's blessings, she accompanied him to Istanbul when he returned in 1869, where the two got married and had two daughters, named Fatma and Hayriye.
The name of his second wife was also Marie, but she later took the name Naile Hanım. They had three daughters, named Melek, Leyla and Nazlı, and one son, named Edhem.
His daughter Nazlı Hamdi (1893-1958) married an Ottoman diplomat, Esat Cemil Bey, in 1912, and the couple had one daughter, Cenan Hamdi Sarç, who lived 99 years and died in 2012.
Osman Hamdi was the granduncle of Sedad Hakkı Eldem, a renowned Turkish architect, and Cemal Reşit Rey, one of the five pioneers of classical music in Turkey (termed the Turkish Five).
