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Seven oil paintings by Osman Hamdi Bey, a leading figure in Turkish art history, are on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a major exhibition examining Orientalism across artistic media.
Titled "Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy," the exhibition brings together approximately 180 works from various collections and will remain open until Feb. 28, 2027. Meanwhile, some of Osman Hamdi Bey's best-known paintings, including "The Tortoise Trainer" and "Two Musician Girls," remain on view at the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation Pera Museum in Istanbul.
Known not only as a painter but also for his work in archaeology, museum development and art education, Osman Hamdi Bey is represented at The Met within a broader narrative exploring how the image of the "East" was built up through 19th-century art and culture.
The selection at The Met includes works by artists such as Ingres, Eugene Delacroix, Jean-Leon Gerome and John Singer Sargent, while also moving beyond painting to examine the wider reach of Orientalism.
Alongside paintings, drawings and photographs, the exhibition brings together books, architectural models, garments, textiles, ceramics, glassware and metal objects. Through this wide-ranging selection, it sets out how Orientalist ideas appeared across different creative and material fields.
The section devoted to Osman Hamdi Bey features seven oil paintings produced between 1879 and 1903.
The selection includes two separate versions of "At the Mosque Door," dated 1879 and 1891, as well as "Excavation of the Temple Palace at Nippur," "Quran Recitation," "Dervish at the Child's Tomb," "Girl Reading the Quran" and "Carpet Seller."
The exhibition also brings in Popular Costumes of Türkiye in 1873, a book prepared by Osman Hamdi Bey and Marie de Launay to showcase the cultural richness of the Ottoman Empire at the 1873 Vienna Exhibition.
Two of the paintings now being shown at The Met, the 1891 version of At the Mosque Door and the 1903 painting Excavation of the Temple Palace at Nippur, previously appeared in Pera Museum's Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans: Archaeology, Diplomacy, Art exhibition, which ran from October 2011 to January 2012.
While the New York exhibition brings together paintings from different collections, Pera Museum continues to display some of Osman Hamdi Bey's most important works in Istanbul.
Drawn from the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation's Orientalist Painting Collection, the museum's Osman Hamdi Bey exhibition brings together figurative compositions, portraits and landscapes from different periods of his career.
The works show how the artist built up his distinctive visual world by drawing on architectural details, historical objects, clothing and photographs. His portraits of family members, together with landscapes depicting Gebze and Eskihisar, also bring out a more personal and freer side of his artistic approach.
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Pera Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
Under its "Long Friday" program, admission is free for all visitors between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Fridays, while all students can visit free of charge on Wednesdays as part of the "Young Wednesday" program.
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