Training Tortoises
Dear art seekers,
I hope you are easing your way into the Monday blues. This summer, I traveled to Turkey for the first time. It was one of the best trips I’ve taken. I apparently have such a good Turkish accent that people mistook me for one of the locals whenever I entered a store and greeted them Merhaba (hello). It was both flattering and embarrassing because they would try to converse with me until they were met with silence. So I stopped speaking Turkish.
During my stay in Istanbul, I visited the Pera Museum, a five-story building full of various exhibitions ranging from contemporary artists to artists from the period of the Ottoman Empire. There, I encountered the well-known Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910). Hamdi Bey was a pioneering artist, an intellectual, the Ottoman Empire's first modern archaeologist and so much more. One prominent painting took up the attention in the room and that was The Tortoise Trainer (1906). As the first and last Orientalist painter of the Ottoman Empire, Hamdi Bey reflects in his work the Ottoman tradition and culture while focusing on elements from daily life to architecture and from objects to ornamentation. Hamdi Bey is known to paint from his photographs, using himself as the main subject. In The Tortoise Trainer (1906) his clothing suggests that he depicts himself as a dervish (a member of a Muslim (specifically Sufi) religious order who has taken vows of poverty and austerity). He wears a turban, with a destar, or sash wrapped around it. He wears a belted, long red robe the bottom borders of which are embroidered; his feet are clad in çedik (indoor footwear) made of yellow sahtiyan, Moroccan (goatskin) leather. In one of his hands, he holds a ney flute, and a nakkare drum on his back with a small drumstick hanging to his front. The scene is set in the upper room at the Green Mosque, Bursa.
But what is the true story behind this painting? The dervish was trying to train the tortoises through the music of the ney and nakkare. But instead, they choose to ignore him and eat green leaves. But that can't be just it. Hamdi Bey created this painting at a time of great social and political turmoil in the Ottoman Empire. “The reforms introduced by Sultan Abdülhamid II had either proved ineffective or had been blamed for the increased upheaval. The Ottoman Empire, which still encompassed parts of the Balkan peninsula, parts of North Africa, all of Anatolia and the Levant, and much of the Arabian peninsula at the turn of the 20th century, was under serious threat from both the growing power of nationalist movements within its territory, and from the incursions of foreign powers which would eventually divide the Empire between them in the aftermath of the First World War”. (Wikipedia)
Given the context in which this painting was created, it has been interpreted as a satire on the slow and ineffective attempts at reforming the Ottoman Empire.
I admire the hidden frustration and sarcasm masked by the peacefulness of being with one’s tortoises and the idea of training them through the sound of art. There is a sense of serenity that I get while observing this painting. Perhaps I am reminded of when I had pet turtles as a child. Every detail in this painting is intentional and has a story to tell. Even the inscription on the arched doorway says: Şifa'al-kulûp lika'al Mahbub ("The healing of the hearts is meeting with the beloved").
Have a wonderful week full of art and excitement and please don’t forget to share this with fellow art seekers!
Sincerely,
Rebecca