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An Intellectual History of Late Ottoman Painting:
Mekteb-i Harbiye and the Development of Realism


This study aims to examine how military painters' educational and intellectual backgrounds who graduated from Mekteb-i Harbiye (the Imperial Military Academy) opened in 1834 shaped their approach to painting. I am trying to explain the role of painting lessons, the sources they feed on, and Harbiye's view of the painting by questioning the factors that are effective in the preferences of the military painters, who mostly painted landscapes and still-lifes in the rich visual culture of the nineteenth century. I evaluate the courses related to modern painting from the curricula between 1845 to 1877 within the scope of science and functionality that prevailed after the Tanzimat (Reorganization) period (1839-1876). In this context, the study attempts to explain the dynamics in which the Ottoman Muslim population internalized modern painting and the realist attitude; on the other hand, it emphasizes that modern painting is seen as a tool in the modernization policy rather than an artistic activity in Harbiye.
Keywords: Harbiye, military painters, realism, landscape, still life, aniconism, modernization, functionality, knowledge production
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Bu çalışmanın amacı, 1834’te açılan Harbiye Mektebi’nden mezun olan asker ressamların eğitimsel ve entelektüel arka planlarının resme yönelik yaklaşımlarını nasıl şekillendirdiğini incelemektir. On dokuzuncu yüzyılın zengin görsel kültürü içinde çok büyük oranda manzara ve natürmort resmeden ve sanat tarihi kapsamında ağırlıklı olarak bu yönleriyle ele alınan asker ressamlar grubunun, tercihlerinde etkili olan unsurları sorgulayarak resim derslerinin rolünü, beslendiği kaynakları ve Harbiye’nin resme bakışını açıklamaya çalışıyorum. 1845’ten 1877’ye kadar ele aldığım ders programlarından modern resimle alakalı olan dersleri, Tanzimat sonrası ağır basan bilimsellik ve fonksiyonellik kapsamında değerlendiriyorum. Bu bağlamda çalışma, taraftan modern resmin ve realist tavrın Osmanlı Müslüman nüfusu içinde hangi dinamiklerle içselleştirildiğini açıklamaya girişirken, diğer taraftan modern resmin Harbiye’de sanatsal bir etkinlikten ziyade modernleşme politikası içinde bir araç olarak görüldüğünü yeniden vurgulama gayretindedir.
Anahtar sözcükler: Harbiye, asker ressamlar, realizm, manzara, natürmort, suret yasağı, modernleşme, fonksiyonellik, bilgi üretimi
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Günsel Renda, for the way she enlightened me in the field of art history. Since the day we met, she has always been encouraging. For me, Prof. Renda is a source of inspiration with her hard-working disposition. Prof. Filiz Yenişehirlioğlu was the first person who supported my research and introduced me the field. I began to walk in this path following her advice. Assist. Prof. Deniz Türker widened my horizon every moment in which we conversed. She always supported this research by heart and gave to-the-point recommendations during this process.
Ş. Akile Zorlu helped me whenever I needed, being her student at METU was the greatest chance for me at the beginning of my academic journey. My professors from various fields at Koç University played a crucial role in times of struggle: Shirine Hamadeh from ARHA, Kerem Tınaz from History Department, Ceyhun Arslan, Nazmi Ağıl from Comparative Literature Department both eagerly answered me and asked striking questions. Moreover, Güneş Işıksel, Gizem Tongo, Berrak Burçak, Pelin Tekinalp, Özge Gençel shared their invaluable opinions on my argument, text and sources and greatly contributed to the research.
I’m also grateful to the intellectual circle of friends; Sefer Soydar, İrfan Ertan, Eyüp Murat Kurt, Burak & Özge Aslanmirza, Alev Berberoğlu, and Erhan Saçlı created a fruitful environment in which I can share every draft to be reshaped/reorganized.
I’m thankful to the co-sufferers for their constant support and understanding during “the best of times, and the worst of times.” Nuray Nisan Köknar, Aslı Şebnem Haliman, Tuna Ayber, Zeynep Olgun, Christine ji-Kim, Mustafa Seyit Korkmaz, Faysal Murat Demir, Musa Kazım Azimli, F. Melda Gökdeniz, Abbas Tekin, Özgür Özdemir, and Gizem Gönültaş terraformed my life.
Last but not least, I would like to say a special thanks to my family for their endless exertion to make my vita better.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables ............................................................................................................ vi
List of Figures .......................................................................................................... vii
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1
Methodology……………………………………………………………………..2
Literature Review………………………………………………………………..4
Mekteb-i Harbiye and Mütefennin Zabit in the Pictorial Context……………..12
Mütefennin Zabit and its Background………………………………………….14
How and Why Harbiye is a Model for Realist Painting's Development……….17
Ottoman Realism: A Conceptual Framework.....................................................20
Chapter 1: MEKTEB-İ HARBİYE .......................................................................... 29
Establishment and the Curricula………………………………...……………...29
Content of the Courses…...…………………………………………………….42
Physics…………………………………………………………………….42
Architecture………………………………………………………………..48
Perspective………………………………………………………………....51
Chapter 2: THE ROLE OF PAINTING……. ......................................................... 60
In the Production of Topographical Knowledge……………………...………..60
In the Production of Scientific Knowledge………………...…………………..77
In the Industrial Production...…………………………………………………..84
Chapter 3: ICONOPHOBIA IN ISLAM AND FIGURATIVE PAINTING ........... 95
Conclusion……………..…………………………………………………………115
Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 121
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. The curriculum of Mekteb-i İdadi (High School) in 1850.
Table 2. The curriculum of Mekteb-i İdadi in 1865.
Table 3. The curriculum of Mekteb-i İdadi in 1875.
Table 4. The curriculum of Mekteb-i Rüşdiye (Middle School) in 1877.
Table 5: A selection of courses from the curriculum of the Infantry class in 1850.
Table 6: A selection of courses from the curriculum of the Infantry class in 1865.
Table 7: A selection of courses from the curriculum of the Infantry class in 1877.
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LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1 A figure from the optics part of the same book, İshak Efendi, Mecmua-i Ulum-ı Riyaziye, vol.3, (İstanbul: Darü’t-tıbbatü’l-amire, 1832), plate 14.
Fig. 2 From optics and light part, Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, figure 210.
Fig. 3 Drawings on optics and light, Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, figure 197.
Fig. 4 Drawings on optics and light, Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, figure 177.
Fig. 5 Drawings on optics and light from Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, figure 244.
Fig. 6 Architectural plan and detail from Ahmed Şükri’s Fenn-i Mimari. Ahmed Şükri, Fenn-i Mimari, (İstanbul: Mekteb-i Harbiye-i Şahane Matbaası, 1263/1847), figure 97.
Fig. 7 Architectural motifs from Ahmed Şükri’s Fenn-i Mimari. Ahmed Şükri, Fenn-i Mimari, figure 63.
Fig. 8 Drawings of arches, Monsieur Leclercq, Fenn-i Mimari, plate 20.
Fig. 9 The use of Plane Table, İshak Efendi, Kavaid-i Ressamiye, (İstanbul: n.d.), plate 7.
Fig. 10 On geometrical drawing, borders, shades, and other rules. İshak Efendi, Kavaid-i Ressamiyye, plate 14.
Fig. 11 On paints, İshak Efendi, Kavaid-i Ressamiyye, plate 15.
Fig. 12 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır (1859), plate 1.
Fig. 13 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır, plate 7, fig. 18.
Fig. 14 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır, plate 15, fig. 29.
Fig. 15 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır, plate 17.
Fig. 16 Ahmed Ziyaeddin, Amelî Menazır, plate 2.
Fig. 17 Ahmed Ziyaeddin, Amelî Menazır, plate 3.
Fig. 18 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, (Kostantiniyye: Matbaa-i Ebüzziya, 1894), 40.
Fig. 19 Mustafa, Yıldız Palace Garden, 72.5x91cm, Painting and Sculpture Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 109.
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Fig. 20 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, 42.
Fig. 21 Cemal, Fenerbahçe Point, 68x98 cm, oil on canvas, National Palaces Collection. Gülsen Sevinç Kaya (ed.), Milli Saraylar Tablo Koleksiyonu (İstanbul: TBMM Milli Saraylar, 2010), 128.
Fig. 22 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, 40.
Fig. 23 Ahmet Şekür, Yıldız Palace, 1890s, oil on canvas, Painting and Sculpture Museum,
Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 102.
Fig. 24 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, plate 4.
Fig. 25 Süleyman Seyyid, Landscape from Erenköy, oil on canvas, 29x112 cm, Sakıp Sabancı Museum Collection, No.200-0097-SSE.
Fig. 26 Şekûr Kulları, Önünden dere geçen bir köy [View of a village with a river], undated, oil on canvas, collection MSGSÜ Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture. Berin Gölönü, “Images with a Second Life”, 111, fig.1.
Fig. 27 İbrahim Halil, Küçük Plançete (İstanbul: Mekteb-i Fünun-i Harbiye Matbaası, 1894), plate 3.
Fig. 28 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, plate 8.
Fig.29 Zekâi Kulları, Söğüt Ertuğrul Gazi Türbesi [Söğüt, Mausoleum of Ertuğrul Gazi], undated, oil on canvas, collection Ankara State Museum of Painting and Sculpture. Berin Gölönü, “Images with a Second Life” 115, fig. 5.
Fig. 30 Zekâi Kulları, Mescit [Masjid], undated, oil on canvas, collection MSGSÜ Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture. Berin Gölönü, “Images with a Second Life” 112, fig. 2.
Fig. 31 “Tomb of Ertuğrul Gazi in the environs of Söğüt.” Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Abdul Hamid II Collection, LC-USZ62-81513. Ahmet Ersoy, “The Sultan and His Tribe” 45, fig. 9.
Fig. 32 “His Royal Highness Ertuğrul Gazi’s Mausoleum situated in Söğüt (before repairs)”, Ahmet Ersoy, “The Sultan and His Tribe” 45, fig. 10.
Fig. 33 Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, The Abdul Hamid I Fountain, 1906, oil on canvas,100x78cm, Dolmabahçe Palace Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 119.
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Fig. 34 Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, Ahmed III Fountain, undated, oil on canvas, İşbank Collection, Ankara. Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 226.
Fig. 35 Botanical drawings, Hüseyin Remzi, İlm-i Nebatat, (İstanbul: Karabet Matbaası, 1308 / 1892) figs. 26, 33, and 50.
Fig. 36 Drawings of several species, Hüseyin Remzi, Tarih-i Tabii, (İstanbul: Karabet Matbaası, 1308 / 1892), figures 29, 9, and 23.
Fig. 37 Asuman Baytop, and Feza Günergun, “Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi..,” figure 4.
Fig. 38 Asuman Baytop, and Feza Günergun, “Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi..,” figure 8.
Fig. 39 Şeker Ahmed Paşa, The Quinces, 1904, oil on canvas, İşbank Collection, Ankara. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 100.
Fig. 40 Hamdi Kenan, Landscape with Watermelons, oil on canvas. ykl. 60x40 cm. Private Collection. Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 94.
Fig. 41 Süleyman Seyyid, Still-life, Gülay İnce, “Süleyman Seyyid: Türk Resminde Natürmort Öncüsü,” (Master’s Thesis, Marmara Üniversitesi, 2000), 169.
Fig. 42 Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, The Fountain of Mehmed Emin Ağa, 1896, The Topkapı Palace Porcelain Collection, 34/352, Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 337. Fig. 43 Mustafa Vasfi Paşa, Map of Golden Horn and its Surroundings, 47,5-31,7cm, Salt Archive. APLMVP001, https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/109969.
Fig. 44 Hoca Ali Rıza, Anatolia Map, 69x102 cm, İ.B.B. Atatürk Kitaplığı. 912.561 ALİ 1321 H.k.1.
Fig. 45 Zekâi Paşa, İbrahim Edhem Efendi, Özlem İnay Erten, Hüseyin Zekai Paşa ve Mübeccel Hazineler, İstanbul: Bozlu Art Project, 31.
Fig. 46 Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, Portrait, oil on canvas, 32 x 34 cm, Aydın Zekâî Bill- Acar Bill Collection. Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 381.
Fig. 47 Süleyman Seyyid, Old Man, 35x32, oil on canvas, Private collection. Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 56.
Fig. 48 Süleyman Seyyid, Dervish, watercolor on paper, 55 x 40 cm, Private Collection. Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 376.
Fig. 49 Süleyman Seyyid, Nude, 47x33 cm, Galip Tomaç Collection, Gülay İnce, “Süleyman Seyyid: Türk Resminde Natürmort Öncüsü,” 296.
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Fig. 50 Hoca Ali Rıza, Hayreddin Bey, oil on cardboard, 31 x 20 Cem Ener Collection, Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 212.
Fig. 51 Hoca Ali Rıza, Woman and her child, charcoal on paper, 15.5 x 8.5, Gülbün Mesara Collection, Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 477.
Fig. 52 Şeker Ahmed Paşa, Self Portrait, 1880s, oil on canvas, 118x85 cm, Painting and Sculpture Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Painting in Turkey,” 111.
Fig. 53-4 Proportions, Kemal Bey, Vücud-ı Beşer ve Nisbetleri, (left 30, fig. 12. right 25, figure 11.)
Fig. 55 Albrecht Dürer, ..Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, 1528, 103-104.
Fig. 56 Şeker Ahmed Paşa, Deer in the Forest, 1886/1887, oil on canvas, 136,5x101 cm, Private Collection. İpek Duben, Türk Resmi ve Eleştirisi, 133.
Fig. 57 Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, Erenköy, oil on canvas, 60x80 cm, Painting and Sculpture Museum, 456/43. Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 377.
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INTRODUCTION
In this study, I argue that nineteenth-century Ottoman military painters’ works were realist, and then I examine the dynamics of this particular realist attitude. My focus is the group of painters trained at Mekteb-i Harbiye (Imperial Military Academy) between 1850-1877. The starting point of studies on military painters argues that they are pioneer artists in modern Ottoman/Turkish art history, although they did not try to be artists. In this argument, the artist is an attributed/retrofitted adjective for them. This scholarly narrative of the twentieth century created an art-oriented profile and transformed military training’s purposes and motivations into biographical details. All changes in modern schools’ curricula were indexed to art historical context, and this misrepresented the motivation behind technical adaptations such as perspective and modern topographical depiction. However, this one-dimensional approach doesn’t reflect multifaceted – technocratic profile of military painters; although the policy to train mütefennin zabit (officers of the sciences) consolidated itself in modern schools during the Tanzimat (Reorganization) Period between 1839 and 1876. 1
Since Turkish art historiography has mostly focused on artworks and treated painters of the time as if they were nothing but artists, it is inappropriate to follow the intellectual foundation process of this realistic approach. The main problem was that literature neglects a comprehensive emphasis of Ottoman intellectuals in science and reason. By looking in detail at the curricular framework that the Mekteb-i Harbiye offered, I aim to demonstrate that realism had a function in education of mütefennin zabits. Painting, like many other fields, took on a function in modernization policies, responded to certain demands, and gained instrumentality. It was closely related to the military developments in physics, cartography, topography, and bastion in Europe since the 1770s.2 Realism in the Ottoman context emerged as a necessity after the adaptation of new military techniques in these fields to the Ottoman military during the nineteenth-
1 Darina Martykánová discusses in her article whether technocracy or technocratic logic should be used for the Ottoman intellectual/expert groups. Darina Martykánová, “Science and Technology in the Ottoman Language of Power (1790s-1910s)” European Journal of Turkish Studies 31, (2020): 1-29.
2 For the primary sources of the period, Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini, The Art of War: Restored Edition, trans. by G.H. Mendell and Lt. W.P. Craighill (Ontario: Legacy Books Press Classics, 2008). Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. by James John Graham (London: N. Trübner, 1873).
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century. In other words, realism emerged with a military logic. In addition, this functionality provided a legitimate basis for the development of realism.
In this context, the painting studio became a practice field for the Ottoman military painter. What I mean here is that theoretical knowledge gained in classes and practices in land visualized in the painting studio without artistic concerns. In the context of military painters, art is a matter of painter’s individual history, not of the state or its institutions.
The first aim of this research is to examine the development process of realism's dominance in Ottoman painting by showing that military painters were not artists but technocrats who could paint. A study on painting alone will not be enough to grasp the essence of Ottoman realism. Realism entered a multi-layered intellectual structure in the hands of the Ottoman military staff, who tried to understand nature technically to fulfill military and socio-economic needs and tried to integrate into the European intellectual environment based on science.
The second aim of the research is to determine the limits of the European influence in the adaptation process, and to lay out the grounds of the reinterpretation practices for the legitimization of the adapted techniques of the realist attitude. This will give an alternative answer to why the Ottoman painter, who had the opportunity and talent to develop his pictorial repertoire, directed himself to landscape and still life in the second half of the nineteenth-century century, when the elements of visual culture were so enriched.
In this direction, in the first chapter, I discuss the contents and aims of the courses related to painting in the Harbiye through the curriculum and textbooks. In the second chapter, I deal with the duties of the painters after their graduation from the school, the intersecting points of the content discussed in the first part, and the functionalization of painting. In the last chapter, to show how the education of military painters reflected in their works rather than hesitations, I discuss aniconism in Islam, pro-figure intellectual formation, and preferences of military painters in these discussions.
Methodology:
After Hilmi Ziya Ülken’s panoramic book on the development of modern ideas, three acclaimed works unveiled the characteristics of bureaucratic, intellectual, and educational reformation in the nineteenth-century.3
3 Hilmi Ziya Ülken, Türkiye’de Çağdaş Düşünce Tarihi. (İstanbul: Ülken Yayınları, 1992).
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First, Şerif Mardin’s The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought focused on the Young Ottomans, who “were at one and the same time the first men to make the ideas of the Enlightenment part of the intellectual equipment of the Turkish reading public and the first thinkers to try to work out a synthesis between these ideas and Islam.”4 Mardin questioned how such a group could have emerged; accounted the formation of Young Ottoman ideas, and analysed the political system of each of the Young Ottomans. In his Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922, Findley focused on the organizational aspects of administrative reform at the Sublime Porte and examined the transition toward a bureaucracy staffed by educated men with fixed salaries, a well-organized hierarchy together with the clash caused by continuing former personal ties.5
Again, Findley, in Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History concentrated on the modernization of the Ottoman administration system as the transition of officialdom from traditionalism towards rationalism. 6 He analyses the members of this position and offers that they were preponderant rather than elites.
Built upon this understanding, while evaluating the education at Harbiye and the intellectual/educational background of military painters, I use the approaches of Alper Yalçınkaya, Ercüment Asil, and Olivier Bouquet. Yalçınkaya emphasizes that the characteristic of the Ottoman approach to science was usefulness which prioritized the practical and material benefit to evaluate the worth of an activity.7
Again, Ercüment Asil, on a parallel ground, argues that modern Ottoman education aimed to train specialized professionals. Therefore, as he points out, it was technical and instrumental which glorified efficiency, production, rationality, objectivity, and accessibility.8 This emphasis on professionalization, scientification, and functionality is also valid for Harbiye, which aims to train mütefennin zabit (officers of sciences).
4 Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Syracuse University Press, 2000), 4.
5 Carter Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).
6 Carter Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
7 Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 131.
8 Ercüment Asil, “The Pursuit of The Modern Mind: Popularization of Science, The Development Of The Middle Classes, And Religious Transformation In The Ottoman Empire, 1860-1880” (PhD. Diss. The University of Chicago, 2017), 36.
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Because, as mentioned, Harbiye represents the military wing of Ottoman modernization, but military teachers taught also at many civil schools. This context increases the importance of the school in the spread of the understanding emphasized by Yalçınkaya and Asil. While analyzing this background, I focus as much as possible on how the graduates of Harbiye reflect the status they received from here and how they played out their professional roles. Olivier Bouquet offers to shift the analysis towards sociogenesis, in his own words, “the individual mechanisms of modernity”. According to him, assigned and acquired statuses of individuals, and their roles and relationships should be observed.9
In this approach, I lean towards written sources rather than in-depth analysis of visual material. These are the curricula of Harbiye from 1846 to 1877, and the textbooks used in the teaching of the courses -mostly written by its teachers- and journal articles. I prefer reckoning with their polymathy and intersecting concerns to grasp the dynamics of their artistic preferences. In a broader historical context, in light of written sources, and by focusing on the educational background of painters, I suggest an alternative examination of the development of Ottoman realism.
Literature Review:
In his article,Ahmet Kamil Gören focused on the problems in writing the history of nineteenth-century Ottoman art.10 Particularly, Gören attempted to answer a big question: What are the possible solutions for problems of the historiography on nineteenth-century Ottoman art in today’s Turkey? According to him, the main obstacles were the absence of primary sources as well as the nationalist and Eurocentric discourses. His criticisms and evaluations helped me get familiar with the problems and alternative manners. Gören discusses current theories, interpretation of sources, disputes in these interpretations, and possible compensations. Therefore, this article forms a safe ground for my arguments to flourish.
9 Olivier Bouquet, “Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernization?” in Order and Compromise: Government Practices in Turkey from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early 21st Century, edited by Marc Aymes, Benjamin Gourisse, and Élise Massicard (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 61.
10 Ahmet Kamil Gören, ‘‘Değişen Tarihsel Süreçler, Değişen Kavramlar Bağlamında Türk Resim Sanatı Yazımına İlişkin Oluşan Sorunlar Üzerine Bir Deneme.” in Değişen Tarihsel Süreçler Değişen Kavramlar, edited by Kıymet Giray. 63-82. (Ankara Üniversitesi, 2008).
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Ottoman Painting is a must-read source for Ottoman painting.11 The authors follow a chronological order from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. The book begins with the artistic legacy of Anatolian Seljuks, examines Ottoman illuminated manuscript culture, and stretches its scope to the development of canvas painting in the late-Ottoman period. The authors' rigorous work on written and visual sources provides an outstanding panorama of the artistic culture in approximately 600 years. In this sequence, it is convenient to pursue the conceptual transformation and changing taste of Ottoman patrons over time. Moreover, this long visual journey provides detailed information on interactions with Eastern cultures, encounters with European art, companionships between artists, and the multi-layered structure of artistic production in the Ottoman Empire. They adduce numerous examples of art production in different provinces of the Empire and commissioned artists. The last two chapters of the book, New Trends in Ottoman Painting and From Walls to Canvases, contribute to my research with their comprehensive approach to art history and meticulous iconographic analysis of visual material. Although its emphasis on complex networks between the Ottoman Empire and European culture, there is a progressive process in the nineteenth-century under the patronage of the Ottoman palace. Although I emphasize painters' intellectual concerns rather than the patronage of the palace, this book is still essential to detect previous concerns and concepts transmitted to the nineteenth-century century and understand the emergence of the artistic milieu in İstanbul.
Mustafa Cezar’s panoramic approach gives the conceptual frame of Ottoman modernization in art and the role of Osman Hamdi Bey in this process. In the first part, he begins from the eighteenth-century transformation in the Ottoman Empire and continues with the nineteenth-century.12 In this chronology, Cezar brings every detail of art-related fields such as painting, architecture, and sculpture. The second part is devoted to Osman Hamdi Bey and his career in art, archaeology, and museology. In the whole book, he connects Ottoman policy and transformation in art. He uses many archival documents and gives their translations. Nevertheless, he treats the Ottoman
11 Serpil Bağcı, Filiz Çağman, Günsel Renda, and Zeren Tanındı, Ottoman Painting. edited by Serpil Bağcı, translated by Ellen Yazar (İstanbul: Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism, The Bank Association of Turkey, 2010).
12 Mustafa Cezar, Sanatta Batı'ya Açılış ve Osman Hamdi (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası A.Ş. Kültür Yayınları, 1971).
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modernization as a march towards European culture. Rather than focusing on the Ottoman peculiarities, he criticizes the European impact on Ottoman culture and ignores decision-making processes on facture in their unique context.
Although his approach is relatively problematic, the book is still a fundamental source for its rich primary and secondary sources. He gives names of curricula and instructors in newly inaugurated schools. Also, some unique interpretations reveal Ottoman artistic concerns. I think, under the light of contemporary approaches, the connections established by Cezar will be useful for my research.
Sezer Tansuğ's book titled Çağdaş Türk Sanatı can be considered an important initiative in terms of emphasizing continuity, examining the development dynamics of modern Turkish art, and placing nineteenth-century painting in a new paradigm.13 While Tansuğ criticizes the primitive concept, he also makes determinations about the stylistic distinctions among the military painters and the stages they went through while developing their personal styles. Other books, in general, were focusing on the interactions between Ottoman and European arts, in terms of the blending of styles in the Ottoman art, Tansuğ criticized this approach as well and argued that Ottomans were always adapted European techniques and styles against Europe.
Turan Erol, a painter and art historian, examines the characteristics of the development of modern Ottoman-Turkish painting from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.14 He includes social, cultural, political, and institutional changes while questioning the foundations. According to him, modern Ottoman – Turkish painting appeared in the framework of these developments; this means that the transformation in art was a part of the general transition in Ottoman culture.
This chapter, through the eyes of a painter, brings me valuable sources as well as some to-the-point interpretations on adaptations of modern techniques and styles. However, Erol's comments are based on a comparison between European and Ottoman paintings. Although he argues that Ottoman and Turkish artists developed their art following unique circumstances of the state, his comparison between two cultures takes him to evaluate Ottoman-Turkish painting through European concepts and styles. In my
13 Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, (İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1986).
14 Turan Erol, “Painting in Turkey 19th and Early 20th Century,” in A History of Turkish Painting, edited by Mustafa Aslıer, Tural Erol, Kaya Özsezgin, Günsel Renda and Adnan Turani, translated by John Wheeler. 89-138. (Seattle and London: Palasar SA, 1988).
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thesis, I would like to emphasize the links between artists and their intellectual preferences. I am going to take emerging intellectual movements, intersections between scientific, and artistic concerns into account.
In this direction, Mehmed Esad’ın Mir’at-ı Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümayun ve Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye Adlı Eserlerine Göre 19. Yüzyıl Türk Resmi, written by İhsan Terzi as his doctoral thesis, is a direct reflection of painting lessons.15 It is worth mentioning in terms of showing how it is processed and on what foundations it is based. Another important study that completes this thesis is the publication prepared by İnci Aydın Çolak as her master's thesis, in which she determines the place of painting lessons in the curriculum by including all military schools, including Mühendishane and Harbiye, and the yearbooks published by the schools.16 Both studies provide highly detailed data in the form of art classes, teachers, art-related specialization classes, alumni names and short biographies, and published books.
Oğur Arsal attempts to write a Marxist critique of Ottoman art; by examining the political, economic, and social structure of Ottoman artistic transformation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In other words, he recontextualizes painting and discusses it as part of a major transformation. In the first chapter titled Kuram (Theory), Arsal draws a panorama of art history theories and justifies his Marxist methodology. He argues that the socio-political structure functionalizes painting in a framework, and the Ottoman palace was the major determinant in this system. Upon this argument, he devotes the second chapter to figure out the role of the palace in the transformation in Ottoman politics, economy, and society. By narrowing his research to Istanbul, Arsal establishes connections between the visual transformation of the city and changes in the structure. After emphasizing the significance of enriching architectural styles and new building types in İstanbul, he links painting to the visual transformation. Then, he examines these links in the new structure leaded by the Ottoman palace. Although his interpretations neglect permeability of cultural borders; and developed on the sharp distinctions between the East and the West, the state and society, and the state-based narrative of
15 İhsan Terzi, “Mehmed Esad’ın Mir’at-ı Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümayun ve Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye Adlı Eserlerine Göre 19. Yüzyıl Türk Resmi,” (PhD. Diss. Gazi Üniversitesi, 1988).
16 İnci Aydın Çolak, “Kuruluşundan 1940’lara Kadar Geçen Sürede Askeri Okulların Türk Resim Sanatına Katkıları,” (Master’s Thesis, Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi, 2011).
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modernization, his book is still valuable considering the approach centered around the circumstances surrounding art, and the interaction between artists and their environs.17
İpek Duben attempts to explore the pillars of modern Ottoman-Turkish painting. The most significant characteristic of the book is that it is an intellectual history rather than art history. She works with a variety of sources from visual culture, literature, and aesthetics. In Duben's opinion, the Ottoman intellectual's worldview grounded itself on dualism. The Ottoman intellectual was a gin-between. In other words, he was neither Western nor Eastern. However, my argument is that they blended these two cultures in their minds and created a unique/amalgamated culture. Despite the contrast between us, her rich sources, and links she established between literature and painting are useful for me. I also think that art history cannot be written without literature. Because aesthetic theories developed mostly by litterateurs in the Ottoman context.18
Wendy Shaw attempts to reveal the connection between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman / Turkish modernization and European painting. In her book, Shaw elaborates on the topic in a broader context than previous studies, includes intellectual tendencies, individual networks, and their contributions to aesthetic interpretations. Shaw digs the topic deeper in the chapters, “From Old Niches to New Painting” and “Digesting Western Art: The Academy and Realism.” She examines the characteristics of the Ottoman painting from the late eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century and attempts to detect the dynamics of the transformation. Although she is supposed to demonstrate adaptations from Europe, she sometimes compares Ottoman painting with Europe. Then she speculates about the level of "Europeanness" of Ottoman art and criticizes Ottoman artists as “superficial imitators.” I need to reformulate/rearticulate some misinterpretations so that a constructive methodology could be ignited.19
Especially the monographs that started to be written in the 2000s and the extensive research carried out began to reveal the versatile training of military painters and the tasks
17 Oğur Arsal, Modern Osmanlı Resminin Sosyolojisi (1839-1924), translated by Tuncay Birkan. (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2000).
18 İpek Duben. Türk Resmi ve Eleştirisi 1880-1950 (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Universitesi Yayınları, 2007).
19 Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting: Reflections of Western Art from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011).
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they took after this training, together with their painter aspects. The book Şeker Ahmet Paşa 1841-1907, which was published following an exhibition on the artist held in 2008 and edited by Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu and Ilona Baytar, is one of the important examples in this respect. 20 Besides the publication of new documents about Şeker Ahmed Paşa and the correction of some factual errors, a catalog of his paintings and examinations of his duties other than his painting, the book, which also gives examples from the works done since the publications of Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti21 (the Ottoman Society of Painters), has a historiographic follow-up makes it possible.
In the same vein, the two-volume work named Hoca Ali Rıza Ev ve Şehir, prepared by Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu, is a Museum-Book in Şerifoğlu's own words. 22 This work, in which his paintings in private collections and sketchbooks in libraries are published, constitutes a very important source of Hoca Ali Rıza's identity as a painter, while conveying all aspects of his life and the tasks he has undertaken, with detailed narratives from different witnesses. Again, a selection of articles from his own period to the date of the book's publication, as in the book of Şeker Ahmet Paşa, shows once again the historiographic transformation and the place of Hoca Ali Rıza. Finally, Özlem İnay Erten's doctoral thesis on Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa23 is a study that enriches the literature in this context. The work, which questions the limitations of seeing Zekâi Paşa as just a painter with its emphasis on his versatile personality, fills a gap by making a visual and written documentation of the duties of Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa during the years he spent in the palace and the works he carried out within the scope of these duties.
Deniz Artun gives a detailed account of Ottoman and Republican students educated at the Académie Julian, Paris. By beginning to discuss issues from the early encounters in the eighteenth-century, Artun historicizes the development of modern
20 Ilona Baytar, and Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (eds.), Şeker Ahmet Paşa 1841-1907 (İstanbul: TBMM Milli Saraylar Daire Başkanlığı, 2008).
21 The society was founded in 1909 and continued under different names during the republican period. It was administrated by the graduates and students of Sanayi-i Nefise, and it published the first art journal of the Empire. Among the members, there were famous artists of the time such as Sami Yetik (1878-1945), Ruhi Arel (1880-1931); and as a significant point, the society was supported by Şehzade (Prince) Abdülmecid Efendi (1868-1944). For their intellectual and popular activities, Gizem Tongo, “Painting, Artistic Patronage and Criticism in the Public Sphere: A Study of the Ottoman Society of Painters (1909-1918),” (MA thesis. Boğaziçi University Institute Social Sciences, 2012).
22 Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressam Hoca Ali Rıza: Ev ve Şehir. vol. 1-2 (İstanbul: Emlak Basın, 2018).
23 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” (PhD. Diss. Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi, 2018).
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painting the in-Ottoman milieu. Then she elaborates on the education process of students sent by the Ottoman / Turkish governments to Paris. To explain the transformation, she scrutinizes the intellectual network, artistic environment, multi-cultural encounters in Paris. Artun points out is that the Ottoman artists carefully and consciously adapted European style in accordance with their traditional values and beliefs. Beyond the Eurocentric arguments offering a progressive model for Ottoman modernization, she stresses a dynamic and multi-layered panorama. I’m going to benefit from the first chapter of the book, which is on the Ottoman students at the Académie Julian. Here, I can pursue how Ottoman students were educated, under what conditions they developed their artistic styles, and what their concerns were in their early years of careers.24
Berrak Burçak begins from eighteenth-century awareness and early encounters with modern science in Europe. Then extends the scope of her thesis; elaborates on the role of science in intellectual life, social engineering, and nation-building in the nineteenth century. She argues that Ottoman intellectuals integrated themselves into European networks through scientism, and they regarded science as “a remedy for all ills healing ‘the sick man of Europe’.” Her dissertation is an invaluable source for my thesis since her arguments on the Ottoman scientism constitutes a strong base for my claims on Ottoman art. I argue that Ottomans developed realist painting on a scientific base. Ottoman painters were also members of the intellectual milieu, and they gained a scientific attitude towards nature and truth. Burçak brings valuable interpretations supported by numerous examples and proves that scientific thinking was placed on the basis of the Ottoman mindset. Therefore, her interpretations provide me with significant sources and contribute to drawing a frame for my context.25
Soner Duman and Süleyman Kaya’s article questions the problem of figural depiction in Ottoman Islamic fıqh.26 From the sixteenth to early twentieth century, figurative art was controversial among the Ottoman ulema. The authors attempt to detect boundaries of the prohibition of figural depiction and to figure out that there was no
24 Deniz Artun. Paris'ten Modernlik Tercümeleri: Academie Julian'da İmparatorluk ve Cumhuriyet Öğrencileri. (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2012).
25 Berrak Burçak, Science, A Remedy for All Ills Healing “The Sick Man of Europe”: A Case for Ottoman Scientism (Ph.D. Dissertation. Princeton University the Department of Near Eastern Studies, 2005).
26 Soner Duman, and Süleyman Kaya, ‘‘Osmanlı Dönemi Fıkıh Eserlerinde Tasvir,” in Tasvir: Teori ve Pratik Arasında İslam Görsel Kültürü, edited by Nicole Kançal-Ferrari and Ayşe Taşkent. 107-16. (İstanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2016).
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prohibition for it if someone does not worship the figure. The article provides primary and secondary sources on both the historical background of my topic and nineteenth-century discussions. Although the article does not have a detailed examination of sources, Turkish translations of fatwas written by Ottoman ulema members are essential documents to develop my argument.
Nicole Kançal-Ferrari’s article entitled is an incredible literature review. In this work, Ferrari examines the latest publications on the “Islamic iconoclasm.”27 She harshly criticizes the position of authors and their Eurocentric perspective. Every sentence of the article allures my mind; contributes my arguments to take a stand against Eurocentrism and overinterpretations. She calls me to penetrate the Ottomans’ mind. The characteristics of Islamic culture, its main concerns, and problems in the historiography on these will contribute to me a lot in my research. Following her comments, I’m going to recalibrate and rearticulate my arguments. I will try to grasp the insightful knowledge and develop arguments based on the authentic network.
Silvia Naef’s short book enlightens the practical side of figural depictions in Islamic visual culture rather than focusing on whether there is a prohibition for figural representation in Islam. She emphasizes that there was a difference between the discourse and the practice in Islamic culture. Moreover, Naef criticizes the historiography on iconophobia in Islam. According to her, current historiography proposes a monolithic and unified culture for Islamic countries. She points out different attitudes in Islamic cultures and reveals diversity in practice. This book is crucial for my thesis. Her study is rare for taking the nineteenth-century discussions into account. Nevertheless, Naef does not go into detail of it. There is a small part of the controversial/figurative artworks in the Ottoman Empire. Here, she addresses the attitude of the Ottoman palace towards sculpture and the response of religious groups. I am planning to extend this part in my thesis by adducing different examples from artists endeavoring to legitimize modern art, and religious authorities struggling to maintain their position in society.28
27 Nicole Kançal Ferrari, “İslamda Tasvir Problemi ile İlgili Son Dönem Literatürüne Bir Bakış,” in Tasvir: Teori ve Pratik Arasında İslam Görsel Kültürü. edited by Nicole Kançal-Ferrari & Ayşe Taşkent. 117-53. (İstanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2016).
28 Silvia Naef, İslamda Tasvir Sorunu Var mı?, translated by Can Belge. (İstanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 2018).
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Mekteb-i Harbiye and Mütefennin Zabit in the Pictorial Context:
Ottoman painting evolved into realism throughout the nineteenth century. Tabiat ve hakikatin haricinde olmamak (not being out of nature and truth)29 was the motto that determined the aesthetic frame of Ottoman realism. This realistic approach had flourished in the hands of the post-1840 generation, the first generation educated in modern Ottoman schools offering natural and social sciences along with art classes in their curricula. Due to the rise of positivism and materialism in Ottoman schools, the members of the generation had integrated themselves into a European intellectual milieu; and scientific thinking constituted the common ground of this integration for Ottomans.
The consolidation of realism in the depiction went hand in hand with scientific thinking. Reliance on empirical data as a result of the dominant positive sciences in the educational background of painters reflected their artistic tendencies as objective reality. Since the erection of artistic pillars of modern Ottoman painting on the same ground with scientific concerns, Ottoman painters developed a gaze seeking for truth in nature. Because, until the inauguration of Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (Imperial Academy of Fine Arts) Ottoman painters learned painting at military or civil schools opened to train officers and bureaucrats such as Mühendishane-i Bahrî-i Hümayun (Imperial Naval School, 1775), Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümayun (Imperial School of Engineering, 1795), Mekteb-i Tıbiyye (Imperial Medical School, 1827), Mekteb-i Harbiye, Galata Sarai Lycée (1868), and Darüşşafaka High School (1873). In these schools, the Ottoman youth got educated to be able to follow contemporary scientific developments for fulfilling the empire’s needs. While taking many courses on current sciences, they learned the pillars of nineteenth-century Ottoman art such as optics, light, architecture, and perspective in these classes. In this framework, an in-depth discussion of the position of science in the Ottoman mindset can illuminate the intellectual and artistic milieu of the nineteenth century Istanbul.
Throughout the nineteenth-century, science constituted the base of the complex Ottoman mindset. Debates on Tanzimat policies, particularly on education, had developed to disseminate modern scientific thinking among young generations. Because science was the foundational stone of European civilization, and the Ottoman Empire had to adapt modern scientific methods to integrate itself better into European civilization based on
29 Namık Kemal, Mukaddime-i Celal (Kostantiniyye: Matbaa-i Ebu’z-Ziya, 1889), 17.
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science and technology. During this period, Ottoman intellectuals discussed a complete renovation and alteration in ancient usages (usul-i atikanın bütün bütün tağyir ve tecdidi)30 in accordance with needs and requirements of the time (ihtiyacat-ı zamaniye and icab-ı asr ü zaman). Modern science, as the most significant desideratum for the Ottoman intellectual, was not illegitimate to adapt from the “Infidel”, by reason of being a member of the same civilization enlightened by reason and science.31
In fact, scientific development in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire had mostly played its role as “useful knowledge.”32 In other words, science was a significant apparatus, as systematic knowledge based on facts, was the ground for the modernization of the Empire. During the century, useful knowledge was introduced diplomats, graduates of the modern Ottoman schools, elites educated in Europe. The concept of usefulness was the foremost concern of these Ottoman elites glorifying science and scientists. They kept addressing the practical purposefulness of scientific knowledge and struggling to develop it in an applicable path as the remedy of military, social, and economic problems of the period.33 As I will try to detail, painting also transformed into an application field that was blended with “useful knowledge” for scientifically operating minds of new generations. It is not far-fetched to argue that Ottomans approached scientific knowledge pragmatically rather than intellectually and crystallized this attitude in their works by supporting it morally.
For instance, Mehmed Emin Âli Paşa (1815-1871), one of the foremost figures of the Tanzimat period as grand vizier and the head of foreign affairs, expressed in 1862 that “working for circularization and diffusing of science and public works, which are derivations of felicity, is a duty for everyone who loves his country and nation.”34 This sentence demonstrates the moral side of the acquisition of scientific knowledge. He reflects on the recalibration in a moral position of the state vis a vis science. The
30 For the complete transliteration of the Gülhane Edict’s original text and its translation in English, French German and Arabic, see Mehmet Yıldız, “Tanzimat Fermanı: Genel Değerlendirme; Karşılaştırmalı İlmî Metin,” Journal of Islamic Research 5, no.1 (2012): 126-177.
31 Gökhan Çetinsaya, “Kalemiye’den Mülkiye’ye Tanzimat Zihniyeti,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce: Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyetin Birikimi, ed. by Tanıl Bora & Murat Gültekingil, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2009), 56. Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots, 55.
32 Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots, 16.
33 For a detailed discussion of nineteenth-century Ottoman science as remedy, please see: Berrak Burçak, Science, A Remedy for All Ills Healing, 2005.
34 Sermaye-i saadet olan ulum ve fünun-ı nafianın neşr u tamimine say eylemek vezaif-i hubb-i vatan ve millettir. Gökhan Çetinsaya, “Kalemiye’den Mülkiye’ye Tanzimat Zihniyeti”, 59.
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constructed link between the possession of scientific knowledge and moral values was not limited to love of country and nation. For example, Hoca Tahsin Efendi (1811-1881)35, a foremost intellectual in the nineteenth century, in his book Tarih-i Tekvin yahud Hilkat (History of Genesis or Creation) published after his passing in 1891, motivated the reader to acquire scientific knowledge by linking it to a hadith (the Prophet Mohamed’s deeds), utlubu’l-ilma mina’l-mahdi ila’l-lahdi (Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave). 36 Also, the publisher, Nâdiri Fevzi, expressed that scientific knowledge provided in Hoca Tahsin’s book dictated the diminutiveness of humanity which ultimately matures the reader morally. Here, the intellectual was responsible for the diffusion of this useful knowledge and educating people.
In this framework, scientific thinking became the pillar of the curricula of modern Ottoman schools to cultivate generations equipped with this useful knowledge. At the end of their education process, modern science became part of the new Ottoman mindset. It was embroidered on its moral codes and reflected on every field of intellectual production. Art, particularly modern painting, was one of the best instances in the period. Although the regulations began to be conducted by a small group of elites at the end of the eighteenth century, scientific knowledge consolidated its place in Ottoman education after the 1850s.37
Mütefennin Zabit and its Background:
Along with the other fields, which are the elements of progress, creating a modern army was linked to education. In the modernizing empire, trained man was the prototype of the new profile, even, sword and science were equalized to each other.38 Therefore, “a new sense of rationality, utility, and technicalism” programmed to educate mütefennin
35 Hoca Tahsin Efendi (1811-1881) was a poet and scholar who worked mostly on astronomy and popularized modern scientific knowledge. He was also disproportionately knowledgeable in religious sciences. He was sent to Paris together with Selim Sabit (1829-1910) in 1857 for education; they were expected to teach at the Ottoman university, Darü’l-Fünun (House of Sciences) that was planning to be opened. Hoca Tahsin published many books and articles to introduce modern sciences in the empire. Among them, Esrar-ı Âb u Heva (the Secrets of Water and Air, 1891), Esâs-ı İlm-i Heyet (Fundamentals of Astronomy, 1893), Tarih-i Tekvin yahud Hilkat (History of Genesis or Creation, 1891) are remarkable. For a detailed biography, see Ömer Faruk Akün, “Hoca Tahsin,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 18, (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi), 198-206.
36 ‘Utlubu’l-ilme mine’l-mehdi ile’l-lahdi’ emrine imtisalen evvela mehdimizi ve saniyen lahdimizi yani nereden geldik nereye gideceğimizi ulum-ı hazıra i’anesiyle arayalım. Hoca Tahsin, Tarih-i Tekvin yahud Hilkat, (İstanbul: Şirket-i Mürettibiyye Matbaası, 1891), 9.
37 For a comprehensive discussion, please see Adnan Adıvar, La Science chez les Turcs Ottomans, (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve, 1939).
38 Adem Ölmez, Modern Osmanlı Ordusunda Alaylılar ve Mektepliler, (İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2017), 141.
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zabits to fulfil the needs of the army.39 This concept dates to the late eighteenth century. The first attempts with the contributions of Claude Alexandre Comte de Bonneval (1675-1747)40 between 1731-1738 and of Baron de Tott (1733-1793)41 between 1771-1776 advanced the technical education in newly establishing schools.42 As part of this continuum, Mühendishane-i Bahrî-i Hümayun in 1775 and Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümayun in 1795 were opened with an emphasis on mathematics and geometry in their curricula.43 Especially, Mühendishane-i Berrî-i Hümayun (from here, mühendishane) had almost a monopoly as the source of mütefennin zabit until the inauguration of Harbiye. Upon the observations of Ebubekir Ratıb Efendi (?-1799)44 in Vienna, the mühendishane was an amalgamation of Austrian military and engineering academies in theoretical and French education model in practical classes.45 To fulfil the needs mainly in artillery and fortification, the school attached importance to technical drawing, map construction, building plans and geography. As expressed in kanunname (code) of 1795, the main purpose of the institution was mühendishanelere fünun-i berriye ve bahriyeden hendese, hesap ve coğrafya fenlerinin intişarı ve Devlet-i Aliyye’ye ehemm ve elzem olan sanayi-i harbiyenin talim ve teallümu ve kuvveden fiile ihracı (the diffusion of geometry, arithmetic, and geography, which belong to land and naval techniques; and for training
39 Ercüment Asil, “The Pursuit of The Modern Mind: Popularization of Science,” 35.
40 Claude Alexandre Comte de Bonneval (1675-1747) was under the service of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) in France, then went to Austria and began to work for Prince Eugène (1663-1736). In 1731, he began to work for the Ottoman Empire. He became Muslim and named himself Humbaracı Ahmed, reorganized the Humbaracı Ocağı (artillery/bombardier corps), and established Hendesehane (geometry school). For more information, see Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatürk, (California, ABC Clio, 2009), 115-6.
41 François Baron de Tott (1733-1793) was a French military officer, and in 1755 he travelled to Constantinople, together with his uncle Charles Gravier, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He was commissioned to gather information about the situation in the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate. Then, the Ottoman government commissioned him in the navy against the Russian fleet. De Tott played a significant role in a short time in the Ottoman military reform. He developed howitzers and sürat topçuları (mobile artillery units), built fortifications on the Bosphorus, and re-organized the program of the naval school. He published his memories in five volumes. For his memories, see his Mémoires du Baron de Tott, sur les Turcs et les Tartares, 5 volumes, (Maestricht : J. E. Dufour et Ph. Roux, 1785).
42 Adem Ölmez, Modern Osmanlı Ordusunda Alaylılar ve Mektepliler, 112-113.
43 Ibid., 114.
44 Ebubekir Ratıb Efendi (?-1799) was a statesman who worked at different positions such as incoming document office and scribe. He was appointed as ambassador to Vienna in 1791 and met famous orientalist Joseph Freiherr Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856). Ratıb Efendi was a remarkable observer, who accounted his observations in his two books. In the first chapter of the first book, he described Austrian army in detail. This contributed to reforms in the empire. For more, see Fatih Yeşil, Aydınlanma Çağında Bir Osmanlı Katibi: Ebubekir Ratıb Efendi (1750-1799), (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2011).
45 İnci Aydın Çolak, “Askeri Okulların Türk Resim Sanatına Katkıları,” 10. For a detailed account, see Kemal Beydilli, Türk Bilim ve Matbaacılık Tarihinde Mühendishâne, Mühendishâne Matbaası ve
Kütüphânesi (1776-1826), (İstanbul Eren Yayınları, 1995).
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and teaching of military sciences, and putting them into action, that are significant and required for the Ottoman Empire.).46 Berrak Burçak describes the new profile of the Ottoman engineer as follows:
Thanks to their scientific and technical education, these engineers constituted not only the new cadres for the army but also shared a new mentality with a modern conception of science as a medium of power. These new intellectuals regarded science as a new and useful category of knowledge and the very symbol of the new age.47
Indeed, mühendishane graduates demonstrated the crucial role of modern sciences and techniques in the empire during the nineteenth century. They were always main actors of the army in constructions, fortifications, mapping, and cadaster. In other words, new professionals well-equipped with useful knowledge of time, played their roles determined by their new statuses. This new profile continued also in the Harbiye. For instance, a document dated July 24, 1827, written to Serasker (commander in chief) Hüsrev Paşa stresses:
If military officers are acquainted with military sciences, soldiers rely upon them, and knowledge of these sciences make officers capable of escaping each danger. Without having officers of sciences and skillful staff, soldiers cannot be commanded; therefore, to educate knowledgeable officers, Europe-like military schools should be established.48
As it will be closely examined in itself, Mekteb-i Harbiye‘s representation of this understanding enchanted all Ottoman intellectuals. Even, in an article published in Basiret on the significance of the developed industry in the Ottoman Empire, the author
46 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, “Ottoman Science: The Last Episode in Islamic Scientific Tradition and the Beginning of European Scientific Tradition,” in Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: Western influence, local institutions, and the transfer of knowledge, (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2004), 34.
47 Berrak Burçak, Science, A Remedy for All Ills Healing “The Sick Man of Europe,” 28.
48 Eğer zabitan fünun-ı harbiyede mahareti var ise askerler dahi kendisine itimad-ı tam olarak ilm-i maarifetiyle her bir muhataranın define kadir olabilir. Mütefennin ve mahir zabitler olmadıkça askere malik olmak emr-i müşkil olub bu makule malumatlı zabitlere malik olmak için dahi Avrupa misüllü esası ittihaz ıkan askeri mekteplerin tesis ve inşası kaydında olmak lazım gelir. Adem Ölmez, Modern Osmanlı Ordusunda Alaylılar ve Mektepliler, 117-8.
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praised Mekteb-i Harbiye for teaching the sciences properly.49 Of course, this situation demonstrates that mütefennin zabit was a model for every intellectual advocating modern science and technique. Moreover, their presence -either Harbiye or other military school graduates- in the empire was a source of hope for the future. At the beginning of his article entitled “The Circumstances Pertaining to the Formation of the Earth According to Science” and published in his journal Dağarcık50 in 1871 upon a question asked by a military school student, Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912)51 expresses that the military schools are “currently and for the future constitute the sources of hope for the Ottomans.”52 This quote from the most prolific author of his time states that military schools were seen as crucial during the period.
How and Why Mekteb-i Harbiye is a Model for Realist Painting’s Development?
In the framework above, Harbiye can give the educational background of the new Ottoman painter. Since the first generation of military painters were the graduates of the 1850s53, it proves more resourceful to focus on the curricula arranged in and after 1846.
49 Basiret was one of the most effective newspapers published by Ali Efendi between 1870-1878, and for the second time in 1908, in İstanbul. It was a member of Hawas, and of Reuter telegraph companies; so, was very integrated into international network. Domestically, Basiret drew interest among ordinary people, ulema, military staff and intellectuals. Some foremost authors wrote articles for Basiret, such as Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi, Poland-convert Suphi Celaleddin Paşa. These authors emphasized the importance of education, industrialization, scientific development and endeavored to popularize these ideas. For more, see İlhan Yerlikaya, “Basiret Gazetesi 1870-1878,” (Ph.D. dissertation. İstanbul Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 1991). For the place of Harbiye in the Ottoman intellectual’s mindset, see Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots, 140.
50 Dağarcık was a magazine published by Ahmed Midhat between 1871-1872. In the magazine, he mostly wrote on materialism and evolution, along with science, literature, and politics. Dağarcık was closed after its tenth issue. For the transcription of the magazine, Koray Sarıdoğan, “Dağarcık Dergisinin Çeviri Yazısı, Sistematik İndeksi ve Tahlili,” (MA thesis, Sakarya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2014).
51 Ahmed Midhat Efendi (1844-1912) was the most prolific and popular author of the century. He published newspapers and magazines, wrote numerous articles, stories, novels and worked for children’s education. Among them, Tercüman-ı Hakikat (1878) is the most long-lived newspaper of the time, also Felatun Bey ile Rakım Efendi (1875) describes the dynamics of the Tanzimat period. It could be said that he had an encyclopaedist approach, wrote on philosophy, science, religion, economy, politics, literature, history, geography, arts and tried to popularize his knowledge especially through textbooks and novels. In his works, he drew the ideal modern Ottoman as religious, knowledgeable, and well-equipped with modern science and technique. For the intellectual position of Ahmed Midhat Efendi, see Orhan Okay, Batı Medeniyeti Karşısında Ahmed Midhat Efendi, (İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1975).
52 Berrak Burçak, Science, A Remedy for All Ills Healing “The Sick Man of Europe,” 90.
53 Before this generation, there was a group of painters sent to Europe. Ferik İbrahim Paşa (sent to London in 1835) and Hüsnü Yusuf (sent to Austria in 1849) from mühendishane, and Ferik Tevfik (sent to London in 1835) from Enderun (the Ottoman palace school), were the first introducers of realist painting in the Ottoman Empire. However, the generation educated in the 1860s canonized, legitimized, and
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Also, this narrower framework can draw a more obvious panorama of the correlation between the rise of realistic approach in painting and the crystallization of the positive sciences’ place in curricula in the modern Ottoman schools.
Harbiye, which was opened as a modern school to meet the needs of the military, is an institution that reflects the mentality of the nineteenth century and is one of the most important actors in the formation of this structure. However, the mühendishane was the first major attempt for integrating painting into education. Therefore, this should be noted that Mekteb-i Harbiye was not a pioneer but a bearer and distributor of an idea. In the mühendishane, students began to learn technical drawing, emulating nature, and the significance of accurate topographical draughting for plans. Moreover, courses directly related to realist painting/drawing -physics, architecture, and perspective- took their place in the mühendishane’s curriculum before Mekteb-i Harbiye. As the last point on the role of the muhendishane, its students represented the trained man profile, together with Tıbbiye’s ones until the middle of the nineteenth century.54
After this time, Harbiye began to graduate its students (1847-8)55 and Harbiye-graduate mütefennin zabits started to play the dominant role in the dissemination of modern knowledge in the empire.56 Except this, why I focused on Harbiye as model demonstrates its comprehensive curriculum and understanding. Harbiye, in general, covered the mentality of the mühendishane and built a new and peculiar program upon this. Moreover, artillery and fortification classes at Harbiye included -at least, in the development of realist attitude- mühendishane’s field. Along with the common courses taught at both, such as mecmuatü’l-mühendisin (basics of engineering), many of mühendishane professors taught at Harbiye. Hüseyin Rıfkı Efendi (1750? -1817)57 was a forthcoming name among them. Beside instructors, during the ministry of Selim Satı Paşa at Harbiye (1837-1841), ders nazırı (minister of classes) Lieutenant Kamil Bey was a
consolidated this approach. For further information, please look at Adnan Şişman, Tanzimat Döneminde Fransa’ya Gönderilen Osmanlı Öğrencileri. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 2004).
54 Adem Ölmez, Modern Osmanlı Ordusunda Alaylılar ve Mektepliler, 149.
55 Ibid, 159.
56 Ibid, 149.
57 Hüseyin Rıfkı Tamani (1750?-1817) was one the most important mathematicians of his time. He was among the founder cadre of the mühendishane, also, between 1806-1816, served as başhoca (head-master) at the same institution. Tamani worked mostly on modern mechanics, and his books and translations on this issue were the main sources both at the mühendishane and Harbiye. For more, Ali Rıza Tosun, Hüseyin Rıfkı Tâmânî ve Elementler Çevirisi, (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayınları, 2010).
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graduate of mühendishane.58 The most significant reformer of the school, Emin Paşa (1841-1846) received his first education also at the mühendishane.59 Lastly, some the mühendishane graduates, Yüksekkaldırımlı Şahap, Sultanhamamlı Mahmut, and Balatlı Mahmut were employed at Harbiye’s printing house, or some such as Eyüplü Cemal and Taşkasaplı Mehmet Akif taught painting/drawing at Harbiye idadis (high school).60 As seen in these instances, in terms of mütefennin zabits’ education and the formation of realist attitude, Harbiye always included mühendishane’s knowledge accumulation.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Harbiye was disproportionately significant as the dissemination source of modern science and technique. In fact, as Osman Nuri Ergin emphasized, Harbiye became a model for all military and civilian schools that were opened later, and those who graduated from Harbiye taught even in civilian schools for half a century.61 Especially Darüşşafaka, which was opened in 1873, was completely managed and taught by Harbiye graduates.62 In addition to this, some Harbiye graduates were subjected to outrage for being inexperienced officers because they got their education at the school, not in the warfront. Hence, they were skillful in theory but not in practice, then, some of them decided to work at different institutions, not pursued the military career.63 So, Harbiye graduates played roles in many fields, and the motivation behind realist painting disseminated mainly in their hands.
Another point, artists of later generations received dominantly Harbiye-graduate military painters as pioneers. This means that rather than other military painters, Harbiye consolidated modern painting in their minds. Even, honorary president of Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti was Hoca Ali Rıza (1858-1930)64.
58 Adem Ölmez, Modern Osmanlı Ordusunda Alaylılar ve Mektepliler, 151.
59 Ibid., 152.
60 İnci Aydın Çolak, “Askeri Okulların Türk Resim Sanatına Katkıları,” 21-27.
61 Osman Nuri Ergin, Türk Maarif Tarihi I-II (İstanbul: Eser Matbaası, 1977), 357.
62 Ibid., 432. For example, Hoca Ali Rıza was the painting instructor at Darüşşafaka from 1886 onwards. Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 54.
63 Adem Ölmez, Modern Osmanlı Ordusunda Alaylılar ve Mektepliler, 160.
64 Hoca Ali Rıza (1858-1930), the most appreciated one by his contemporaries and students in the written sources, was a hard-working and prolific painter famous for landscape and architectural paintings. He graduated from Harbiye in 1884, took painting courses from Osman Nuri Paşa and Süleyman Seyyid Bey, then was appointed as assistant to Osman Nuri Paşa, the painting instructor. He was commissioned by the sultan several times to take photographs and paint landscapes. Also worked at Yıldız Çini Fabrika-i Hümayunu (Yıldız Factory of Tiles) and on a commission establishing Esliha-i Atika Müzesi (Museum of Antique Weaponry). After his retirement as painting instructor at Harbiye in 1911, he continued to work at civic schools such as Çamlıca İnas (Women) High School or İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi. Also, he served as a member of Sanayi-i Nefise Encümeni (the Committee of Fine Arts) founded in 1917. He educated numerous students; although his dervish-like life, he was a leading figure in the formation of modern artistic
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The last point, Harbiye graduates were employed at schools, institutions, and units in the provinces throughout the empire, however, I focus only on Istanbul in the scope of this study.
Ottoman Realism: A Conceptual Framework
First, my limit in this work is Muslim military painters; non-Muslim subjects of the Empire were already producing.65 The main framework for me is to trace the prevalence of the realist attitude among Muslims. The other point, when realism is mentioned, the first names that appear in mind are Gustave Courbet (d.1877), J.B. Camille Corot (d.1875), Honoré Daumier (d.1879), or other Barbizon School painters. Therefore, drawing outlines of European realism - with an emphasis on France - would underline distinctive conditions leading Ottoman realism.66 In Europe, realism emerged as a reaction to academia, and a political stance. The painter, who witnessed the urban and countryside, reflected ordinary people and life on his canvas. The Barbizon School painters, influenced by English painter John Constable (d.1837), focused on woods, fields, or other countryside elements during the 1830.67 Théodore Rousseau (d.1867) was the foremost figure among them, as a “painter of nature rather than a landscape painter.”68 At this point, a slight difference between naturalism and realism needs to be highlighted. As it will be detailed in a few sentences, nature and truthfulness / scientificness were main focal points in naturalism different from politically concerned realism. Théodore Rousseau, like many other Barbizon School painters, mainly interested in representing
milieu. For his detailed biography and all known works, see Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressam Hoca Ali Rıza: Ev ve Şehir. vol. 1-2.
65 Vazken Khatchig Davidian, “Imagining Ottoman Armenia: Realism and Allegory in Garabed Nichanian’s Provincial Wedding in Moush and Late Ottoman Art Criticism,” Etudes arméniennes contemporaines 6 (2015): 155-244. Mayda Saris, İstanbullu Rum Ressamlar (İstanbul: Bir Zamanlar Yayıncılık, 2010). Garo Kürkman, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Ermeni Ressamlar 1600-1923 I-II, (İstanbul: Mathusalem Yayınları, 2004).
66 In Britain (since the late eighteenth century) and Russia (especially after the 1830s), painting became gradually naturalist. However, since the model which Ottomans mainly adapted was French, I’m giving an account of the French realism and naturalism here. For the British naturalism in painting, see Charlotte Klonk, Science and the Perception of Nature: British Landscape Art in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, (New Haven&London: Yale University Press, 1996). For the discussions in Russia, see Carol Adlam, “Realist Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Russian Art Writing,” The Slavonic and East European Review 83, no. 4 (2005): 638-63.
67 Linda Nochlin points out that although John Constable's cloud studies of 1821-2 were partly based on engravings by water colorist Alexander Cozens, they were modelled more after Constable's own observations. He was a miller and a painter; and the meteorologist Luke Howard’s who classification of cloud forms influenced him very much. Linda Nochlin, Realism: Style and Civilization (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971), 18.
68 Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth Century European Art (London: Pearson, 2012), 239.
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nature accurately, focused on tangible side of nature rather than light effects.69 During this period, Jules Dupré (d.1889) and Narcisse Diaz (d.1876) worked with the same approach. Although this difference, realism and naturalism were used interchangeably by some artists and critics of the 1860s because of the common “scientific” and observation-based ground. For example, the naturalist school was truth’s bringing itself into equilibrium with science, according to art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary (d.1888)’s 1865 Salon.70 Two years later, he published an article under the title Naturalism in Liberté and described it as:
Beauty lies before our eyes, not in the brain; in the present, not the past; in truth and not in dream; in life and not in death. The universe before our eyes is that which the painter must represent and translate… To paint what exists, at the moment at which you perceive it, is not merely to satisfy the aesthetic requirements of your contemporaries, it is to write history for posterity; under this double title, it exactly fulfils the goal of art… Naturalism, I say, has no other object and accepts no other definition.71
This attitude continued in for instance the paintings of Jules Bastien-Lepage (d. 1884) as depictions prioritizing observation and based on real-life situations. 72 However, as art historians underline today, realism was a politically motivated movement; therefore, -although the interchangeability of the concepts in his era, Bastien-Lepage was labelled as a naturalist today rather than realist to distinguish painters’ motivations.
Realism emerged in France as a movement and spread to the Continental Europe, England, and the United States. It dominated the artistic milieu from the 1840s until the 1880s. Realists observed the world rigorously and endeavored to depict the contemporary world impartially and truthfully according to their observations.73 “The contemporary world” was the vital point of realism because realist painters always advocated that only valid subject is the world around them. The motto of the period was il faut être de son temps (One must be of one’s time).74 Moreover, Linda Nochlin adds to this
69 Ibid.
70 Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 42.
71 Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, Jason Gaiger (eds.), Art in Theory 1815-1900 (Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1998), 413-5.
72 Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth Century European Art, 382-3.
73 Linda Nochlin, Realism: Style and Civilization, 13.
74 Ibid., 28.
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contemporaneity that “one must be of one’s place” as crucial side of realists; she explains this earful as “the injunction to deal with one’s native country, region, or even, at its most extreme, one’s own property in order to grasp the singularity, the concrete veracity of reality, as well as one’s deepest and most authentic relation to it.”75
Behind the realist movement, the fundamental motivation was a demand for democracy in art, politics, and social life. This concern extended the horizon of subjects towards the “unnoticed or unworthy-to-represent”. The Realists tried to demonstrate that their sources for inspiration -the worker, the peasant, the laundress, i.e., ordinary people and commonplace- was worth to depict as much as antique or holy characters of academic painting. The political dissidence shaping this attitude also created an “epistemological or aesthetic imperative.”76 For capturing reality as it appears, they did not hesitate to use photographs.77 Photography was an aid to freeze the appearance and to see the details.78
The obsession with the observation and the truthful representation brought realist painters to the same line with scientists. According to Eisenman, the Realists had a scientific attitude towards nature and reality; he adds that realist art and science were on a common ground in “impartiality, impassivity, rejection of a priori metaphysical or epistemological prejudice, the confining of the artist to the accurate observation and notation of empirical phenomena, and the descriptions of how, and not why, things happen”.79 To comprehend the correlation between art and science, the understanding of nineteenth century science, which was the “limitless discovery of man and nature,” should be known.
During this period, Auguste Comte (d.1857), Hippolyte Taine (d.1893), and Emile Littré (d.1881) were dominant figures in the development of positivism and philosophy of art. Comte’s analytic and historical approach suggested that observation and experiment-based knowledge must be the source of general knowledge. After the 1850s,
75 Linda Nochlin, The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society, (New York & London: Routledge, 1989), 19.
76 Linda Nochlin, Realism: Style and Civilization, 35.
77 Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art, 44.
78 G. H. Lewes, an art critic and philosopher, wrote on realism in 1858, “realism is . . . the basis of all Art, and its antithesis is not Idealism, but Falsism.” Linda Nochlin, Realism: Style and Civilization, 33-5. However, the dictator Louis Napoleon established a conservative school of official realism including artists such as Jules Breton, Rosa Bonheur, Theodule Ribot, which was opposite to Realism of Courbet. Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art, 211.
79 Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art, 41-3.
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Littré propagated and popularized positivism.80 Taine was in parallel with both names, advocated that “science gave direct knowledge of reality itself, only what science could know is reality.”81 Moreover, moral - ideal codes were not different from and physical evidences in philosophies of Comte and Taine. It is obvious in Taine’s “vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar.” The same attitude was seen in art, as Courbet wrote in his open letter in 1861, “painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the presentation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects; an object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.”82
As seen, socio-political and scientific background affected the emergence of realism in France. However, the Ottoman Empire had peculiar conditions, and realism developed under different circumstances. As it was emphasized at the beginning that the Ottoman realism developed in military schools outside artistic concerns, however, artistic milieu in the empire should be examined to demonstrate whether Ottoman realism coincidentally or imitatively flourished, or its peculiarity determined the context.
For Ottoman-Muslim artists of the nineteenth century, famous court painter Pierre-Désiré Guillemet (1827-1878)’s Académie des dessins et de peinture (Academy of Drawing and Painting) -although its short life (1876-1878)-, Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, and Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France institutionally determined the art milieu in Istanbul. Of course, Muslim participation was much richer and older than these institutions, however, they were mostly patrons or administrators in art organizations rather than participating as artists. For example, all Tanzimat period sultans invited European artists, commissioned them, and consolidated modern sultanic portraiture in the period.83 Especially Sultan Abdülaziz period (r. 1861-1876) was significant in terms of court painters’ involvement in the artistic production. During his reign, Stanislaw Chlebowski (d.1894) and Pierre-Désiré Guillemet were court painters, also famous artists such as Ivan Konstantinoviç Aivazovsky (d.1900) and Jean Léon Gérôme (d.1904) visited Istanbul.
80 Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth Century Art, 41.
81 Ibid., 41.
82 Linda Nochlin, Realism: Style and Civilization, 23. Charles Harrison, et al., Art in Theory 1815-1900, 403-4.
83 For the commissions, see Günsel Renda, “Tasvir-i Hümayun 1800-1922,” in Padişahın Portresi Tesavir-i Al-i Osman, edited by Selmin Kangal et al., 441-542. (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2000).
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These invited painters contributed to the flourishment of modern art especially in the palace. Some, like Guillemet or Sultan Abdülhamid II’s court painter Fausto Zonaro (d.1929) taught painting in the academy or private lessons and educated Muslim children together with non-Muslims. Undoubtedly, they were in good connection with authors, engineers, and military staff commissioned by the palace, and they had a role in the creation of the intellectual milieu. Even, their artistic production became models for painters who wanted to pursue an artistic career in Istanbul.
During the same period, art education spread to civilian schools like Mekteb-i Mülkiye (School of Political Sciences, 1859), Mekteb-i Sanayi (School of Industry, 1868), Galata Sarai Lycée (1868), and Darüşşafaka High School (1873). These schools were opened to fulfil bureaucratic and industrial needs of the empire, however, they also aimed to educate children in art to make them familiar with cultural codes of the “civilized” world. Especially, there are some famous painters graduated from Darüşşafaka and Galata Sarai.84 Some students of Harbiye, such as Süleyman Seyyid, sent to France and pursued painting courses, however, after returning from France, they worked independently of artistic concerns in their own business and remain loyal to functionality until their retirement.
Here, what prevents the possibility of accidental entry of realism into art was the determinative role of the Ottoman context and reasons of education at Harbiye. The subordinate benefit of Harbiye was that it provided a ground for Muslims to be involved in the production of an already familiarized practice of painting. Those who learned perspective, architectural proportions, topography, and laws of light, -although they didn’t learn this in the context of art- formed a ground where they could progress through transitioning to artistic experience. The fact that names such as Sami Yetik (d.1945) pursuing education at Sanayi-i Nefise after leaving Harbiye can be important examples in this context.
Realism, which military painters put into practice for military purposes, demonstrates that Ottoman painting was under completely different conditions. The paranoia in the period of Abdulhamid II’s period (r.1876-1909) preventing painters from
84 For more information on painters from these schools, see Zeynep Ögel (ed.), From Mekteb-i Sultani to Galatasaray Lycee: Painters, 1868-1968, (İstanbul, Pera Museum, 2009). and Rumeysa Işık, “Batılılaşma Sürecinde Darüşşafakalı Ressamların Resimlerinde Üslup Analizi” (MA thesis. Sakarya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2015).
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depicting poverty, beggars, etc. also differentiated Ottoman realism from Europe in terms of reflecting Ottoman streets on canvases.85 Still, this does not explain why military painters always drew landscapes or still-life. As a matter of fact, it is essential to prioritize the definitions shaped around specific conditions in which military motives are considered.
Realism in the hands of military painters emerged as formal realism. In terms of content, Ottoman visual practice was already documentary; manuscript illustrations can still be used as visual records today. The point that makes the Ottomans different is not the fact that it imbues the intellectual foundations around which realism was formed, but the application of realism as a requirement of transforming scientific thought. The common ground of the definitions gives clues about the idea of realism in the Ottoman mindset. The first one belongs to former military officer, then art historian and painter Celal Esad (1875-1971)86 and published by Istılahat-ı İlmiye Encümeni (Committee of Scientific Terminology, 1913). The second one is from the dictionary prepared by Vahid Bey (1873-1931)87, again a former military officer, later an art historian and translator:
Istılahat-ı İlmiye Encümeni: Realism, which is a movement that expresses things as they are seen, is against the mind's seeking beauty in the object to develop its beauty or to make it more beautiful in form by adding an imaginary beauty. The opposite of idealism.88
85 For a conversation between the Chief of Court Protocol Münir Paşa and the painter Fausto Zonaro, see Fausto Zonaro, Twenty Years Under the Reign of Abdülhamid, edited by Erol Makzume, and Cesare Mario Trevigne, translated by Dylan Clements (İstanbul: Geniş Kitaplık, 2011), 120.
86 Celal Esat Arseven (1875 – 1971) was a painter, author, and politician. He graduated from Harbiye in 1894, before Harbiye, he continued Mülkiye and Sanayi-i Nefise. He wrote on various fields, such as art history, photography, theater, architecture, urbanism, and served in many commissions for conservation and restoration. His many works were canonical sources in disciplines, such as Türk Sanatı (Turkish Art, 1928), and Sanat Ansiklopedisi (Encyclopedia of Art, 1943-1952). For a primary source for his life, see Celal Esad Arseven, Sanat ve Siyaset Hatıralarım, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1994).
87 Mehmed Vahid Bey (1873-1931) graduated from Harbiye, but left military and began to work at Düyun-ı Umumiye (Ottoman Public Debt Administration) until 1925. Besides, he was an expert on art history and antiquities, and taught art history at Sanayi-i Nefise from 1908 to 1931. His art history class ranged from the Stone Age to the contemporary period with an emphasis on architecture and painting. Wrote and translated books, published articles, gave lectures and endeauvored to disseminate modern art historical and archaeological method in the empire. Seçkin Naipoğlu, “Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi’nde Sanat Tarihi Yaklaşımı ve Vahit Bey,” (Ph.D. dissertation. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2008).
88 Réalisme (hakikiyye) : Eşyayı görüldüğü gibi ifade etmekten ibaret bir meslek olub o eşyada zihnin güzellik arayarak o güzelliği inkişaf ettirmesine veyahut hayali güzellikler ilavesiyle şeklen güzelleştirilmesine muhaliftir. Hayaliyye mesleğinin aksi. Istılahat-ı İlmiye Encümeni, Sanayi-i Nefise Istılahatı, câmii Celal Esad (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1914), 94.
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Vahid Bey: It is to seek only the truth without an imaginary aim of beauty or perfection, to imitate nature simply. We can call it realism or the truth-loving style. 89
Another point is that realism and naturalism are the same things for the Ottoman painter. This point, which draws attention especially in art criticism and art history writings, suggests that the realist attitude may have been used in a way to include naturalism since it emerged and developed from an understanding that would contribute to scientific and technical production. İbnülemin Mahmud Esad (1856-1918)90, a statesman and legist, also defined realism in this manner, in his Tarih-i Sanayi (History of Arts & Crafts) as showing things as they are in accordance with the truth, never paying attention to their beauty. 91
In addition to the definition of realism in this way, it is important that the concept of ressam is dessinateur (draughtsman) in two terminology dictionaries prepared at the beginning of the twentieth century, together with the terminological discussion in a footnote in Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu (The Collection of Painted Plates), written by.museum director Halil Edhem (1861-1938).92 This means that, despite all its artistic content, the concept of ressam also comes up with a craftsmanship content with its technical side. The agreement of the Committee and Mehmed Vahid, who disagreed over the meaning of many concepts, shows the nature of the accumulation in the artistic
89 Réalisme : Bir bedia-ı hayaliyye, bir gaye-i kemaliyye mevcud olmaksızın yalnız hakikati aramak, tabiatı sade ve doğru bir suretde taklid etmektir. Buna (meslek-i hakikiyyun) veya (tarz-ı hakikatperestî) diyebiliriz. Vahid Bey, Bazı Istılahat-ı Mühimme-i Sanayi-i Nefise Hakkında Mütalaat (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1915), 20.
90 İbnülemin Mahmud Esad (1856-1918) was a multifaceted intellectual, as legist, mathematician, historian, teacher. He began his education at mosque, learned logic, fıqh, tafsir, and kalam; then continued at military idadi and Erkan-ı Harbiye class with private permission to learn natural sciences and mathematics. Until his death, he worked at several institutions, wrote and translated many books on religion, history, natural sciences and law. For more information on his biography and works, see Ali Erdoğdu, “Seydişehrî,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 37, (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi), 25-27.
91 Üçüncüsü realist mesleğidir, ki eşyanın letafetine asla dikkat etmeyerek olduğu vechle ber vech-i hakikat iraesini ister. İbnülemin Mahmud Esad, Tarih-i Sanayi, 464.
92 Istılahat-ı İlmiye Encümeni, Sanayi-i Nefise Istılahatı, 39. Vahid Bey, Bazı Istılahat-ı Mühimme-i Sanayi-i Nefise, 19. Halil Edhem, Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1924), 6.
Halil Edhem Eldem (1861-1938) got his education in natural sciences at Zurich and Vienna, then completed the philosophy program at Basel. He served at many institutions, however, his main contribution to Ottoman art history was his directorate at Müze-i Hümayun (Ottoman Imperial Museum) and his publications on antiquities -especially Turko-Islamic epitaphs and numismatics, and the book, Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu, influenced highly with the separation of art history into two as pre-Sanayi-i Nefise and post-Sanayi-i Nefise, and the first completed history of modern Turkish painting.
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background, with Halil Edhem's articulation with them. While the words nakkâş93 and nâkış94 are suggested as the acception of the word peintre (painter), the translation of the word peinture (painting) is nakş.95 in all three studies. This shows that the color and the dessin are separated. While describing the Romanticism movement that emerged in Germany, İbnülemin Mahmud Esad said that they (Romantics) do not attach importance to color (renk) as much as drawing (resim)96. The concepts he used show the direction of accumulation.
Although this separation, the essential concepts were still permeable. For example, the most important lexicographer of the time, Şemsettin Sami (1850-1904)97, wrote in Kamus-i Fransevi (French-Turkish Dictionary) that both dessinateur/trice98 and peintre99 were ressam in Turkish. He defines resim in his Kamus-ı Türki (Turkish Dictionary) as tasvir yapmak fen ve sanatı (art and technique of depicting).100 As seen in these samples, Şemsettin Sami regards the concepts’ interchangeability at that time, and keeps meanings comprehensive.
However, as the person who prepares the most extensive historical dictionary of the time in France, Emile Littré, could be the reference point to follow dessinateur’s line from French to Turkish languages. Emile Littré defines dessinateur in his Dictionnaire de la langue française as :
93 Istılahat-ı İlmiye Encümeni, Sanayi-i Nefise Istılahatı, 86.
94 Vahid Bey, Bazı Istılahat-ı Mühimme-i Sanayi-i Nefise, 19. Halil Edhem, Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu, 6.
95 Istılahat-ı İlmiye Encümeni, Sanayi-i Nefise Istılahatı, 86. Vahid Bey, Bazı Istılahat-ı Mühimme-i Sanayi-i Nefise, 19. Halil Edhem, Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu, 6.
96 İbnülemin Mahmud Esad, Tarih-i Sanayi, 464.
97 Şemsettin Sami Frashëri (1850-1904) was a prolific thinker, playwright, novelist; became a prominent figure in the Ottoman intellectual milieu during the late nineteenth century. He wrote numerous booklets on natural sciences, history and civilization of Islam, mythology, linguistics. Sami studied Arabic, Persian and French, therefore he could work in five languages including Turkish and Albanian. He prepared the first encyclopaedia in Turkish, six-volume Kamusü’l-Alam, (Encyclopaedia of General Sciences, 1889-1898) and dictionary in Turkish, Kamus-i Türki (1899), and from French to Turkish, Kamus-ı Fransevi (1882). For more, see Abdullah Uçman, “Şemseddin Sami,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 38, (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi), 519-23.
98 Dessinateur/trice ressam, musavvir. Dessinateur graveur hakkak, ressam. Dessinateur de fabrique fabrikada kalıbcı. Dessinateur pour ameublement ….
Dessiner resim ve tasvir itmek. Mücessem suretde göstermek, belli itdirmek. Se dessiner belli olmak, görünmek. Neticeye takarrüb etmek. Şemsettin Sami, Resimli Kamus-ı Fransevi, (İstanbul : Mihran Matbaası, 1905), 771.
99 Peinture : resim, tasvir. Ressamlık, sanat-ı tersim, musavvirlik. Nakş, boyama. Peintre: ressam, musavvir. Nakkaş, boyacı. Şemsettin Sami, Resimli Kamus-ı Fransevi, 1655.
100 Ressam: Resim yapan, resim ve tasvir yapmak sanatını bilen ve icra eden adem, musavvir. Resim: tasvir yapmak fen ve sanatı. Fotoğrafla alınan tasvir, fotoğraf. Şemsettin Sami, Kamus-i Türki, (Dersaadet: İkdam Matbaası, 1900), 662-3.
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I. The one who exercises the art of drawing. II. Speaking of painters, the one who is skilled at drawing. III. He says himself especially in opposition to colorist .... In painting, there is drawing and color; so that one distinguishes among the painters as the draughtsman and the colorists… IV. The one who draws the design, the plan of a building, of a garden, etc. V. Name of artists who make models for workers, for fabric and tapestry manufactures, for embroidery.101
Under the light of Emile Littré’s multifaceted definition of dessinateur, it is noteworthy for military painters what they meant when they described themselves as ressams should be reconsidered at this point of distinction. It can be said that military painters, who are definitely known to have received technical painting education, when they call themselves ressam, they meant dessinateur, and they focused on drawing rather than color. Moreover, I think that the closeness of the concepts fenn and sanat supports this argument. As Darina Martykánová points out that “fenn as well as ars included not only the notion of practice, but sometimes also that of craftwork. Thus, fenn could be used in reference to the same practices as the word san’at...”102 At this point, adjectives such as serenity, motionlessness, otherworldliness, gentleness, or dualities such as Western technique and Eastern mentality, used when dealing with the paintings of military painters, especially the use of color here, do not seem to reflect their concerns.
101I. Celui, celle qui exerce l'art du dessin. II. En parlant des peintres, celui qui est habile à dessiner. III. Il se dit spécialement par opposition à coloriste.… Il y a dans la peinture le dessin et la couleur; de sorte qu'on distingue parmi les peintres les dessinateurs et les coloristes… IV. Celui qui trace le dessin, le plan d'un bâtiment, d'un jardin, etc. V. Nom des artistes qui font des modèles pour les ouvriers, pour les manufactures d'étoffes et de tapisseries, pour les broderies. Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, tome deuxième, (Paris : Librairie Hachette, 1874), 1113.
102 Darina Martykánová, “Science and Technology in the Ottoman Language of Power,” 3-4.
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CHAPTER I:
MEKTEB-İ HARBİYE
Establishment and the Curricula
In 1834, the Mekteb-i Harbiye was established under the supervision of Namık Bey, who was a polyglot officer and had been in several European capitals,103 to fulfil the gap of qualified military staff for the modernization of the Ottoman army. Beyond this first reason for the inauguration of the school, Harbiye became an open-door for the entrance of modern sciences and integration into European intellectual network. Together with two Mühendishanes and civil schools opened after the 1850s, Harbiye constituted the intellectual derivation of the Ottoman Empire; its students graduated as versatile soldiers, mathematicians, thinkers, painters etc. These people served the empire both as practitioners and theoreticians of modernization. The first group of modern Ottoman painters were among these intellectuals.
To grasp the dynamics of the transformation in Ottoman painting, the examination of educational background of Ottoman painters keeps a crucial position. Since these painters were not trained to be artists, it is not adequate to focus on drawing and painting classes. I think that to figure out the position of modern painting (and the beginning of its journey in the Ottoman Empire), the links between the paintings and painters’ mindset should be re-established. As one of the first doors opening to the modern thinking, education at Harbiye constitutes an essential place. The motive behind the inauguration of the school was expressed in the report:
“…. It is extremely significant to study foreign scripts and languages, which is the key to learn assorted military sciences, and then these sciences and techniques themselves for Glorious Soldiers of Mohammed, which is the exigence of the Imperial state. Therefore, to substitute and educate skilled and talented students, it is required to inaugurate a Military School, called école militaire.
If God lets, thanks to the imperial excellency, his servants will improve by favor of education and learn foreign scripts and languages and then be moved to schools for mathematical sciences and assorted industries, which are called école
103 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye (İstanbul: Şirket-i Mürettibiyye Matbaası, 1894), 3.
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mathématique and école polytechnique. Then they will pass to applied school, named école d’application and their knowledge will be examined practically.104
In these sentences, Harbiye expresses the motivation as providing education to train multifaceted soldiers acquainted with modern sciences, techniques, and foreign languages. However, students could not receive proper education during the first decade. At the beginning, the school consisted of two stages, which give education for 8 years. During birinci mekteb (first stage, 7 years), students learned basics such reading and writing, sarf (morphology), nahiv (syntax), erkam (numbers), fenn-i inşa (composition), and akaid-i diniyye ve şurut-ı İslamiyye (religious codes and Islamic rules). Then they pursued their education in ikinci mekteb (second stage, 1 year) and took ilm-i hesab (arithmetic), mecmuatül'l-mühendisin (basics of engineering), harita tersimi (drafting map), topografya ameliyatı (topographical operation), ameliyat-i hendese (practical geometry) and ilm-i hendese (geometry). In these years, lessons were taught sequentially. After finishing one book of a field, students began to read another book of a different field. The period of study and the curriculum were uncertain. Students learned sciences ordered and permitted by the minister of the school105.
During the 1840s, Harbiye began to be more dynamic. From its inauguration to 1838, twenty-six students were sent to London, Vienna, and Paris.106 Doctor Arkirus, French teacher at Mekteb-i Tıbbiye, began to teach French in 1840. One year later, Emin Paşa, one of the first students sent to Europe, became the minister of the school after his return until 1847. He appointed one of the professors at the mühendishane, Büyük Tahir Efendi, as arithmetic and geometry professor; Tahir Efendi also taught ordu kurma (army
104 …. kuvvet-i tâli‘-i ferhunde-i metâli‘-i hümâyûnları muktezâsı Devlet-i Aliyye-i ebediyyü'd-devamlarına mahzâ atiyye-i ilâhiyye olan Asâkir-i Mansûre-i Muhammediye'nin nizâmı teferruâtından olup tahsili derece-i nihayede elzem olan ulûm-ı mütenevvi‘a-i harbiye istihsâline miftah olan hatt ve lisan-ı ecnebiyeyi ve ba‘dehû ulûm ve fünûn-i mütenevvi‘a-i harbiyyeyi öğrenmek için kabiliyetli ve müsta‘id şâkirdân ikame ve talim ve ta‘allümlerine ekol militer tabir olunan Mekteb-i Askeriye inşa ve ihdâsı lâzımeden olduğundan ……….. letâfet-i havanın talim ve ta‘allüme memur olan müsta‘iddân kullarının teşhîz-i ezhânlarına medâr-ı kaviyye olduğu âşikâr olmakla ve inşâallâhu'r-Rahmân sâye-i merâhim-vâye-i hazret-i şahanede memurîn kulları ber-vech-i matlûb gelişerek hatt velisan-ı ecnebiyeyi ve ba‘dehû isti‘dâdlarına göre ekol matematik ve ekol politeknik tabir olunan ulûm-ı riyâziye ve sanâyi‘-i mütenevvi‘a mekteb odalarına nakl ve ba‘dehû tahsil ile ekol de aplikasyon tabir olunan bi'l-fi‘l icra mektebine girip her kulları li-ecli'l-imtihan öğrendikleri fenlerini kendilerine icra etdirilmek lâzım geleceğine binâen ol vakit …… Arşiv Belgelerine Göre Osmanlı Eğitiminde Modernleşme (İstanbul: Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, 2014), 29-30.
105 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 29.
106 Osman Nuri Ergin, Türk Maarif Tarihi I-II, 363.
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establishment), harita (mapping), istihkamat (fortification), mesaha (geodesy), and mecmuatü’l-mühendisin (basics of engineering). At the same time, Emin Paşa himself began to teach twenty-four chosen student cebir (algebra) in his own room, and appointed Monsiuer Santandri as the instructor of epee and swordcraft.107
In 1845, Harbiye was separated into two stages as Mekteb-i Fünûn-ı İdadiye (The High School of Techniques) and Mekteb-i Ulum-ı Harbiye (The School of Military Sciences).108 The inauguration of the high school aimed to prepare military students for the higher level of education. Moreover, more European instructors were invited to Istanbul to teach at the school and new technical equipment brought from Europe began to be utilized. In this time, students sent to European cities turned back to the Empire; they immediately began to teach or appointed to the administrative positions at Harbiye. For example, Küçük Tahir Bey taught riyaziye (mathematics), Silivrili Ali Bey gave lectures on coğrafya (geography), Ömer Fevzi Bey educated his students on harita (mapping), tarama (hatching), usul-i hendese (geometrical method), cebir (algebra) and hesab (arithmetics).109
The year 1846 was a turning point for Mekteb-i Harbiye’s curriculum.110 Three European officers, Monsieur Mouginot, Magnan (staff captains) and Dubreuil (cavalry lieutenant), were sent to Istanbul with the permission of the French Ministry of War, and Monsieur Malinofestche from Prussia to organize the curriculum of Ottoman military school and to teach at Mekteb-i Harbiye after Sultan Abdülmecid’s (r. 1839-1861) personal demand. Together with Derviş Paşa (1817-1878)111, they prepared the reformation plan for Mekteb-i Harbiye, modelled after Ecole de Saint-Cyr. 112 According to these regulations, Monsieur Mouginot began to teach hendese-i resmiye (descriptive
107 Osman Nuri Ergin, Türk Maarif Tarihi I-II, 363.
108 Ibid., 366.
109 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 41.
110 Ibid., 52.
111 Derviş Paşa (1817-1878) was, known as “chemist”, a statesman, natural scientist, and mining engineer. He graduated from the mühendishane. After graduating, he was sent to London, then Paris and studied mining engineering. Derviş Paşa served as the chief-engineer at Keban and Ergani mining site, taught physics and chemistry at Harbiye, then became the minister of this school. He was a member of the committee to determine the border between the Ottoman Empire and Iran, also, represented the Ottoman Empire in military congress. Derviş Paşa constituted a key position in military modernization of the Empire as a statesman putting an emphasis on the significance of military sciences. Bursalı Mehmed Tahir Bey, “Derviş Mehmed Emin Paşa (Kimyager),” Osmanlı Müellifleri, vol. 3, (İstanbul: Yaylacık Matbaası, 1975), 258.
112 Gülşah Eser, “Mekteb-i Harbiye’nin Türkiye’de Modern Bilimlerin Gelişmesindeki Yeri (1834-1876)” (Master’s Thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 2005), 25-6. Osman Nuri Ergin, Türk Maarif Tarihi I-II, 366.
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geometry), menazır (perspective), gölge (shading), sath-ı rakım (surface of altitude), fenn-i makine (machines), ilm-i heyet (astronomy), taksim-i arazi (geodesy) and fenn-i mimari (architecture); Monsieur Magnan taught topografya (topography), fenn-i harb ve seferiye (war and campaign techniques), piyade dâhiliye kanunnâmesi (infantry internal codes) and piyade talimleri (military training), Monsieur Dubreuil gave süvari dahiliye kanunnamesi (cavalry internal codes), süvari nazariyat ve ameliyatı (theory and practice of cavalry) courses, Monsieur Malinofestche taught istihkamat-ı hafife ve cesime (heavy and light fortifications), hücum ve müdafaa (attack and defense), topçuluk talimleri (artillery training); and Monsieur Gués, a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy of Rome, taught resim (drawing and painting).113 Moreover, Prussian officer Godlewsky continued to educated veterinaries. These transformations changed the face of Mekteb-i Harbiye. A Scotch novelist, historian, and traveler, Charles Mac Farlane (1799-1858), visited the school after 1845 reforms. He describes the physical situation of the building, lessons, library collection, and the attitudes of the instructors he met. In his observations, the ambition behind the reforms makes itself apparent:
…At our first visit we found about thirty young men taking lessons in French. The lecture-room was excellent; so was the hall set apart for the physical sciences. This last large room was well provided with apparatus and instruments, English, French, and German: at the upper end of it there was a small library, consisting almost entirely of French books, treating of the Sciences or of the art of war. We were shown a portfolio of drawings made by the students; —all mere copies from French or German engravings or lithographs, but neatly executed. A few mechanical drawings, sections of maps, and plans of fortifications, were as neat as could be produced by any hands. This school had been erected only some three or four years before our visit to it. There were now one hundred and one students....114
In 1848, together with extensions, Harbiye’s second stage was comprised of four sections as Baytar (Veterinary Staff), Piyade (Infantry), Süvari (Cavalry), and Erkan-ı Harb (Military Staff). From 1848 on, students got educated in more organized and
113 Harpokulu Tarihçesi 1834-1945 (Ankara: Harp Okulu Matbaası, 1945), 18. Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 43.
114 Charles Mac Farlane, Kısmet; or, the Doom of Turkey (London: Thomas Bosworth, 1853), 47-9.
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stabilized programs. Although reorganizations, reformations and additions, the curriculum of the Mekteb-i Harbiye remained mostly the same. This persistence on the scientific and sophisticated education contributed to the rise of a new generation in master-pupil relationship. In this framework, the intellectual network in and around the Harbiye can be a sample to understand the development of Ottoman realism.115
Years
1
2
3
4
5
COURSES
Emsile
(Arabic Samples)
Sarf
(Morphology)
Coğrafya
(Geography)
Mantık
(Logic)
Usul-i hendese
(Geometrical Method)
Sülüs
(Thuluth)
Avamil
(Arabic Operatives)
Baharistan
Kavaid-i Farisi
(Rules of Persian Language)
Ameliyat-ı Hendese
(Practicing Geometry)
Bina
(Text Construction)
Hüsn-i Hat
(Calligraphy)
Hüsn-i Hat
(Calligraphy)
Hüsn-i Hat
(Calligraphy)
Cebr-i Adi
(Elementary Algebra)
Rika
(Riq’a)
Resim
(Drawing)
Resim
(Drawing)
Resim
(Drawing)
Resim
(Drawing)
İmla-yı Türki
(Turkish Orthography)
İmla
(Orthography)
İmla-yı Türki
(Turkish Orthography)
İlm-i Hesab
(Arithmetic)
Tuhbe-i Vehbi
Kitabet
(Literary Composition)
Vaz ü Beyan
(Manner and Declaration)
Coğrafya
(Geography)
Gülşen-i Maarif
Table 1. The curriculum of Mekteb-i İdadi (Military High School) in 1850.116
115 In these tables, specialization courses such as piyade talimi (infantry training), meç ve kılıç talimi (epee and sword training), or tathir-i esliha (weapon cleaning) are excluded. I bring only positive sciences and art courses within.
116 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 60-1.
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Class
1
2
3
Kavaid-i Osmani
(Rules of Ottoman Language)
Cebr-i Adi
(Elementary Algebra)
Cebr-i Adi
(Elementary Algebra)
İlm-i Hesab
(Arithmetic)
İlm-i Hesab
(Arithmetic)
Usul-i hendese
(Geometrical Method)
Gülistan
Kitabet
(Literary Composition)
Kitabet
(Literary Composition)
Coğrafya
(Geography)
Coğrafya
(Geography)
Kozmografya
(Cosmography)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Resim
(Drawing)
Resim
(Drawing)
Resim
(Drawing)
Cimnastik
Gymnastics
Cimnastik
(Gymnastics)
Cimnastik
(Gymnastics)
Kavaid-i Farisi
(Rules of Persian Language)
Tarih-i Osmani
(Ottoman History)
İmla
(Orthography)
Baharistan
Table 2. The curriculum of Mekteb-i İdadi in 1865.117
117 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 81-2.
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Classes
Mahrec
1
2
3
4
COURSES
Mantık ve Tatbikat-ı Kavaid-i Hesab
(Logic and Applied Arithmetic)
Cebr-i Adi
(Elementary Algebra)
Tarih-i Osmanî
(Ottoman History)
Kurun-u Vusta Tarihi
(History of Middle Ages)
Kurun-u Ahire Tarihi
(History of Modern Ages)
Hendese-i Halliye
(Analytic Geometry)
Hendese-i Musattaha ve Tatbikatı
(Practicing Plane Geometry)
Kurun-u Ulâ Tarihi
(History of Primeval Era)
Mebaniü'l-İnsa
(Essentials of Construction)
Mebaniü'l-İnsa
(Essentials of Construction)
Coğrafyayı Umumi
(Global Geography)
Coğrafyayı Umumi
(Global Geography)
Hendese-i Mücesseme
(Analytic Geometry)
Müsellesat-ı Müsteviye ve Logaritma
(Plane Trigonometry)
Hikmet-i Tabiiye
(Physics)
Mevâlid-i Selâse
(Botanic, mining and zoology)
Kitâbet
(Literary Construction)
Kitabet
(Literary Construction)
Kitabet
(Literary Construction)
Kitabet
(Literary Construction)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Resim
(Drawing and Painting)
Resim
(Drawing and Painting)
Resim
(Drawing and Painting)
Resim
(Drawing and Painting)
Hendese-i Resmiye ve Menazır ve Gölge
(Des. Geometry, Perspec., Shade)
Hüsn-ü Hatt-ı Fransevi
(Writing in French)
Tarama
(Hatching)
Tarama
(Hatching)
Tarama
(Hatching)
İmlâ-yı Osmanî
(Turkish Orthography)
İmlâ-yı Fransevî
(French Orthography)
Hendese-i Resmiye Sekli
(Des. Geo Shapes)
Cerr-i Eskal-ı Âdiye
(Bs. Mechanics)
Kimya
(Chemistry)
Kozmografya
(Cosmography)
Table 3. The curriculum of Mekteb-i İdadi in 1875.118
118 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 106-9.
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In October 1857, a school named Mekteb-i Osmani (the School of Ottomans, 1857-1864) was established in Paris, aiming to enable Ottoman students to reach the level that they can transfer to French schools while continuing their education. The document stating the establishment of the school explains its purpose as follows:
To fulfill the education and manners of the students sent by the Ottoman state, an Ottoman school was established in France. The students registered to this school will be taught literature and sciences to fulfill their education in French schools. The school’s program is based on three-years education; the first year, the students will learn the French language and terms, and brief knowledge on history, geography, and arithmetic. Following two years, complex knowledge on history, geography, mathematical and natural sciences, and discussion sessions will be added to the lectures. The students will be separated into two parts as a military and administrative class, yet they can attend common lectures.119
After learning French in the first year and doing practical work, students are divided into military and civilian. In the second year, French, history, geography, physics, chemistry are common courses, and in the special class, they take a military class mathematics course. In the third year, drawing is added to common courses, and soldiers in a separate class take mathematics again.120 One of the officers of Mekteb-i Harbiye, Major Ali Nizami, who was familiar with the French language and who studied in Vienna before, was appointed as the school’s director.121 The school's instructors were well-educated, and they worked rigorously on the curriculum. For example, Monsieur Sardou, the French teacher from 1860 onwards, won an honorary award in rhetoric in 1850. He
119 Fransa'da ikmâl-i tahsil ve terbiyeleri için taraf-ı Devlet-i Aliyye'den gönderilmekde olan şâkirdâna mahsus olmak üzere Paris'de bir Osmanlı Mektebi te’sis olunmuşdur. İşbu mektebe kabul olunacak olan şâkirdân Fransa Devleti mekteblerinin umum derslerinden istifadeye kesb-i liyakat edebilmelerine iktizâ eden edebiyat ve fünûn derslerini ikmâl eyleyeceklerdir. Mekteb-i mezkûrda müddet-i tahsil üç seneden ibaret olarak birinci senede şâkirdânın Fransız lisanıyla ıstılahatını ve tarih ve coğrafya ve hesaba dair bazı malumât-ı icmâliye ve kalan iki seneler dahi lisan-ı mezkûrun dekâyikıyla tarih ve coğrafya ve riyâziye ve ulûm-ı tabiiyye tahsiline mahsus olacak ve bu derslere, okunulan şeylere dair müzâkereler dahi zam ve ilâve kılınacakdır. Şâkirdân iki sınıfa münkasım olarak birincisi tarîk-i askeriyeye ve ikincisi tarîk-I kalemiyeye girecek şâkirdândan mürekkeb olacak ve fî hadd-i zâtihî birbirlerinden farklı olan işbu iki sınıf şâkirdânı müştereken bir derse dahil olabileceklerdir. Arşiv Belgelerine Göre Osmanlı Eğitiminde Modernleşme, 59.
120 Adnan Şişman, “Mekteb-i Osmani (1857-1864),” The Journal of Ottoman Studies V (1986): 100.
121 Ibid., 87.
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wrote a grammar book for students at the school called Larousse. Edouard Levy taught mathematics, and he focused on geometry in this course. Moreover, he touched maps, geodesy, and cosmography.122 Edouard le Barbier was the history and geography teacher. He also included cosmography in his history classes. Joseph A. A. Mennequin, a recognized teacher, succeeded him as the history, geography, and cosmography instructor in September 1860. Privat Deschanel was appointed as the teacher of physics and chemistry. He taught at Lycée Louis le-Grand.123 At Mekteb-i Osmani, he followed Ecole Militaire de Saint-Cyr’s program in physics and chemistry classes.124
In 1864 Mahrec-i Mekâtib-i Askeriye (Priority to Military Schools) was inaugurated. For four years, the school gave mantık (logic), tatbikat-ı kavaid-i Arabiye (practicing the rules of Arabic language), hesab (arithmetic), hendese-i halliye (analytic geometry), coğrafya-ı umumi (global geography), mevâlid-i selâse (botanic, mining and zoology), kavaid-i Osmaniye (rules of Ottoman language), Fransızca (French), imlâ-yı Osmanî (Ottoman orthography), resim (drawing), hüsn-ü hatt-ı Fransevî (writing in French) courses. In 1875, Mahrec was closed, and rüşdiye (middle school) was opened instead.125 Rüşdiyes prepared students for idadis and aimed to raise the education level.
In the same year, Menşe-i Muallimin (The School of Teachers) was opened to educate civil teachers for military schools and raise the number of military teachers.126 The school comprised of several classes with different curricula: topoğrafya (topography) edebiyat-ı Türkiye (Turkish literature), tarih (history), coğrafya (geography), riyaziye-i âdiye (basic mathematics), riyaziye-i âdiye tatbikatı (practicing basic mathematics), riyaziye-i âliye (high mathematics), riyaziye-i âliye tatbikatı (practicing high mathematics), ulûm-ı tabiiye (natural sciences), sınıf-ı sâni ressamlığı (first-year painting & drawing class), sınıf-ı evvel ressamlığı (second-year painting & drawing class).127 In 1877, all military schools bonded to Mekâtib-i Askeriye Nezâreti (Ministry of Military Schools), and the curricula were reorganized:
122 Adnan Şişman, ‘Mekteb-i Osmani (1857-1864),’ 104-5.
123 Ibid., 95-9.
124 Ibid., 104.
125 Osman Nuri Ergin, Türk Maarif Tarihi I-II, 432.
126 Ibid., 432.
127 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 126-130.
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Table 4. The curriculum of Mekteb-i Rüşdiye Military Middle School in 1877.128
128 Mehmed Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 103-4.
Years
1
First Stage
1
Second Stage
2
3
Courses
Esma-yı Türkiyye
(Turkish names?)
Sarf-ı Arabi
(Arabic Morphology)
Nahv-i Arabî
(Arabic Syntax)
Mantık ve Tatbikat-ı Arabiye
(Logic and Practicing Arabic)
Hikâyât-ı Müntehibe
Kavâid-i Farisi
(Rules of Persian Language)
Hesab
(Arithmetic)
Hesab
(Arithmetic)
Sarf-ı Türkî
(Turkish Morphology)
İlm-i Hal
(Ethics)
Coğrafya
(Geography)
Hendese-i Halliye
(Analytic Geometry)
Hüsn-ü Hatt-ı Türki
(Writing in Turkish)
İmlayı Osmani
(Ottoman Orthography)
İmlâyı Osmanî
(Ottoman Orthography)
İmlâyı Osmanî
(Ottoman Orthography)
İmlayı Türkî
(Turkish Orthography)
Kursunkalem Resim
(Pencilling)
Farisî
(Persian)
Mevalid-i Selase
(Botanic, mining and zoology)
Fransızca
(French)
Fransızca
(French)
Hüsn-ü Hatt-ı Türkî
(Writing in Turkish)
Hüsn-ü Hatt-ı Türkî
(Writing in Turkish)
Karakalem Resim
(Charcoal Drawing)
Coğrafyayı Umumî
Global Geography
Kavâid-i Osmaniye
(Rules of Ottoman Turkish)
Resim
(Drawing)
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Class
Year
Courses
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Military Staff
5
İlm-i Heyet. (Astronomy)
Taksim-i Arazi, (Geodesy)
Fenn-i Mimari-i Askeri Eşkali (Military Architecture and Depictions)
İstıhkamat-ı Cesime (Heavy Fortifications)
Harita İnşası (Map Construction)
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Military Staff
4
Manej Talimi Nazariyatı, (Theory of Horse Training)
Manej Talimi Ameliyatı, (Practice of Horse Training)
Tahtıt-i Arazi Ameliyatı (Practicing Delimiting Land)
Haritalar Tersimi (Drafting Map)
Harbiye
Military
4
Fransızca (French)
Tahtit-ı Arazı Ameliyatı (Practicing Delimiting Land)
Haritalar Tersimi (Drafting Map)
Harbiye
Military
3
Tahtit-i Arazi Ameliyatı (Practicing Delimiting Land)
Harita insası (Map Construction)
Fransızca (French)
Harbiye
Military
2
İstihkam Eskali (Fortification Descriptions)
Fenn-i Makine ve Eskali (Machines and Depictions)
Tahtit-i Arazi (Delimiting Land)
Tahtit-i Arazi Haritası (Mapping Delimited Land)
Kimya (Chemistry)
Fransızca (French)
Harbiye
Military
1
Cebr-i Ali (High Algebra)
Müsellesat-ı Müsteviye ve Küreviye (Plane and Spherical Trigonometry)
Cerr-i Eskal ve Mahrutiyat (Mechanics)
Hendese-i Resmiye ve Menazır (Descriptive Geometry and Perspective)
Hikmet- i Tabiiye (Physics)
Fransızca, (French)
Tarama (Hatching)
Baytariye
Veterinary
2
Tesrih-i Mufassal (Detailed Dissection)
Kuva-yı Tabiiye (Natural Forces)
Kimya-yı Tabiiye (Chemistry)
Hikmet-i Tabiiye (Physics)
Fransızca, (French)
İlm-i Nebatat (Botanic)
Baytariye
Veterinary
1
İlm-i Hesab (Arithmetic)
Kimyayı Tabii, (Chemistry)
Hikmet-i Tabiiye (Physics)
Fransızca, (French)
Nebatat Resimleri (Botanical Drawings)
Table 5: A selection of courses from the curriculum of the Infantry class in 1850. 129
129 Yahya Akyüz. Türkiye Eğitim Tarihi, (İstanbul: Alfa Yayınları, 2001), 136. Mehmet Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 58-61. Infantry and Veterinary sections took ilm-i hesab (arithmetic), hikmet-i tabiiye (physics), Fransızca, (French), nebatat (botanic), fenn-i baytari (veterinary) courses together. Gülşah Eser, “Mekteb-i Harbiye’nin Türkiye’de Modern Bilimlerin Gelişmesindeki Yeri (1834-1876)”, 29. Mehmet Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 81.
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Class
Year
Courses
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Military Staff
5
Fenn-i Taksim-i Arazi, (Geodesy Technique)
İlm-i Heyet, (Astronomy)
Fenn-i Mimari-i Askerî ve Turuk-u Mütenevvia, (Military Architecture and Different Types of Roads)
Top Talimi Ameliyatı, (Practicing Artillery)
İstihkamat-ı Cesime Eskali,
(Fortification Descriptions)
Fenn-i Mimari-i Askeri Eskali
(Descriptions of Military Architecture)
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Military Staff
4
Manej Talimi Nazariyatı, (Theory of Riding)
Manej Talimi Ameliyatı, (Practice of Riding)
Baytariye, (Veterinary)
Fransızca, (French)
Tarama, (Hatching)
İstikşafat-ı Harbiye (Military Survey)
Harbiye
Piyade ve Baytar ve Süvari
4
Topçuluk Fenni. (Artillery Techniques)
Top Talimi Ameliyatı, (Practicing Artillery)
Kitabet, (Literary Construction)
Fransızca, (French)
Tarama, (Hatching)
Harbiye
Piyade ve Baytar ve Süvari
3
Fransızca. (French)
Kitabet. (Literary Construction)
Hizmet-ı Dahiliye, (Internal Services)
Tarama (Hatching)
Harbiye
Piyade ve Baytar
2
Tahtit-i Arazi, (Delimiting Land)
İstihkamat- ı Hafife ve Eskali,
(Light Fortification)
Kimya, (Chemistry)
Fransızca, (French)
Kitabet, (Literary Construction)
Tarama (Hatching)
Harbiye Piyade ve Baytar
1
Cebr-i Ali, (High Algebra)
Hendese-i Resmiye, (Descriptive Geometry)
Hikmet-i Tabiiye, (Physics)
Fransızca, (French)
Kitabet, (Literary Construction)
Fenn-i Esliha, (Weaponry Technique)
Tarama, (Hatching)
Hendese-i Resmiye Eskali
(Descriptive Geometry Shapes)
Table 6: A selection of courses from the curriculum of the Infantry class in 1865 130.
130 Mehmet Esad, Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 79-83.
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Table 7: A selection of courses from the curriculum of the Infantry class in 1877131.
131 Mehmet Esad. Mirat-ı Mekteb-i Harbiye, 116-125.
Class
Year
Courses
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Military Staff
6
Cerr-i Eskal ve Tatbikatı (Mechanics and Its Practice)
İnşaat-ı Aliyeden Mimarî, Turuk ve
Simendifer (Architecture, Roads, and Railways)
Taksinı-i Arazi (Division of Land)
Hey'et ve Taksim-i Arazi tatbikatı (Practical Astronomy and Division of Land)
İlm-i Heyet (Astronomy)
Fransızca (French)
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Military Staff
5
Cerr-i Eskal (Mechanics)
İnsaat-ı Alîye (Advanced Construction)
Fransızca (French)
Fenn-i Esliha (Weaponry Technique)
Mimarî Müsekkeli (Architectural Structures)
Sahra Topçuluğu (topçulara) (Field Artillery)
Köprücülük (Bridging)
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Staff
4
Fransızca (French)
Hesab-ı Tefazulî ve tamamı (Differential and Integral)
Coğrafyayı Askeri (Military Geography)
Hıfzıssıhhayı Askeri (Military Healthcare)
İstihkam Sekli (Description of Fortifications)
Erkan-ı Harbiye
Imperial Staff
3
Topografya (Topography)
Fransızca (French)
Makine-i Adiye (Basic Machines)
Cebr-i Ali ve Hendese-i Halliye (High Algebra and Analytical Geometry)
Kimya-yı Askeri (Military Chemistry)
Sath-ı Rakım ve Hendese-i Resmiye Tatbikatı (Practicing Surface, Altitude and Geometrical Drawing)
Hikmet-i Tabiiye Tatbikatı (Practical Physics)
Infantry
2
Coğrafya-yı Askeri (Military Geography)
Hıfzıssıhha-yı Askeri (Military Healthcare)
Fransızca (French)
Askeri Köprücülük (Military Bridging)
Fenn-i Esliha (Weaponry Technique)
Tarama (Surveillance)
Infantry
1
Sath-ı Rakım (Surface and Altitude)
Hikmet (Physics)
Kimya-yı Askeri (Military Chemistry)
Topografya (Topography)
Fransızca (French)
İnsaat-ı Askeriye ve Turuk (Military Construction and Roads)
İstihkam Şekli (Description of Fortifications)
Tarama (Hatching)
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Content of the Courses
Physics:
…..we reached the mathematical hall, where a considerable number of young men were busily engaged in colouring ground- plans of the surrounding country. The lower end of this stately apartment forms a deep bay, round which rows of seats are arranged amphitheatrically, having in the midst of them a table whereon are placed globes, charts, and all the requisites for study. The other extremity of the hall is terminated by a raised gallery, intended for the use of the Sultan, above which hangs his portrait in oils, executed by an Armenian artist, harsh, and crude, and wiry, as though it had been the production of a Chinese easel, and surmounted by a most elaborate drapery. Beneath the portrait is stretched a noble map of the Archipelago, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus. An electrifying machine, and a large map of America, an immense table, and the desks and seats of the students, made up the remainder of the furniture; and the apartment itself was by far the finest that I had yet seen in the country.132
These sentences by Miss Pardoe (1806-1862)133 reflected the motivation in the establishment of Harbiye. The place where she depicted the maps and machines on the wall, praised “by far the finest that I had yet seen in the country,” was the place where mütefennin zabit emerging after the Tanzimat tried to be trained. In this room, Ottoman students began to transform nature into an object of knowledge, even though the school had not been in a technologically advanced condition. Relying on scientific research methods shaped the minds of the post-1840 generations. For example, in physics courses, as in many courses related to natural sciences, Mecmua-i Ulum-ı Riyaziye (Collected Works on Mathematical Sciences), written by Başhoca İshak Efendi (1774-1834)134
132 Julia Pardoe, The Ciy of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836, vol. 1, (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), 188-9.
133 Julia Sophia H. Pardoe (1806-1862) was a novelist, poet, traveller and historian. In 1835-6, she was in Constantinople together with her father. She published her impressions and presented Ottoman administrative and intellectual class sympathically in her very popular book, The Ciy of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks, in 1836. For more, see Joseph Johnson, Clever Girls of Our Time; and How They Became Famous Women, (London: Darton and Co., 1862), 50-9.
134 Başhoca İshak Efendi (1774-1834) was one of the foremost figures in mathematics, perspective, and natural sciences in the early nineteenth century. He studied mathematics, learned French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic and Persian during his education. In 1816, he was appointed as instructor at the
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between 1831-1834, was the primary textbook for Ottoman students. The book is a compilation of recent literature on mathematics, geometry, physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, botanic, zoology, and mineralogy.135 İshak Efendi expresses his motivation as:
Old masters wrote separate treatises on each of these topics, and although some of them have Turkish translations, these are both separate and scattered. Most of the concepts are old-fashioned. So, it is difficult to learn, it takes many years…By collecting all the sciences above in a book through translation and editing from European languages, each of the mathematical sciences from arithmetic to physics can be learned by talented people who want to learn without the need for another book ... 136
In this encyclopedic book, İshak Efendi attempts to spread systematic and modernized knowledge as more accessible for desiring readers. He devoted most of the third volume to physics subjects such as the basic concepts of physics, speed, motion, and its types, forces that cause motion, levers, various mechanical tools, and the application of physics rules to them, mechanics of liquids, flows, wave formation, solid bodies into the fluid, the mechanics of gases and optics. This work contains a comparable level of information to similar works published in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.137 As a result of this, it can be argued that the level of scientific education at the Ottoman military schools, particularly at Harbiye, was close to European programs. The authorities of the period demanded that the sultan examine the book’s content due to the very useful information it contained on military sciences and that it be published and
mühendishane where he became başhoca (Head Instructor) in 1830/1831. His magnum opus, Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye (Collected Works on Mathematical Sciences, 1831-1834), introduced contemporary scientific concepts in the Ottoman Empire, and created a new scientific terminology based on Arabic. For his biography, sources and descriptions of his works, see Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Başhoca İshak Efendi: Türkiye’de Modern Bilimin Öncüsü (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1989).
135 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Başhoca İshak Efendi: Türkiye’de Modern Bilimin Öncüsü, 36.
136 …egerçi bunların herbiri hakkında üstadan-ı mütekaddminin müstakil risaleleri olup bazılarının lisan-ı Türkide tercümeleri mevcut ise de müteferrik ve münfasıl olduğundan gayri, ekser-i ibareleri tavrı kadim ifade olunmuş olduğuna binaen tahsilde usret derkar ve sini'n-i vefireye muhtaç . . . . ulum-i talimiye-i mezkure cümlesi bir yerde ve suret-i ifadeleri Avrupa usulü veçhile muhtasar ve müfid ve kestirme olmak üzere kütüb-i efrenciyeden tercüme ve tenkih tahsilini murad eden erbab-ı istidadın ilm-i hesabdan beda’ eyleyerek ta hikmet-i tabiiyyeye varınca ulum-ı riyaziyenin her birini sırasıyla tahsil idüb kütüb-i saireye ihtiyacdan mustağni olması….. El-hac Hafız İshak Efendi, Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye, vol.1 (Bulak, 1841), el-medhal, 3-4.
137 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Başhoca İshak Efendi, 36.
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distributed under the supervision of İshak Efendi. In other words, it is obvious that natural sciences are deemed necessary for the training of mütefennin zabit and should be taught to military personnel.138 Likewise, İshak Efendi wrote one by one in the preface of his book, which discipline is important for each field of the military and the purpose of learning them:
In our time, it is extremely necessary to learn applied sciences for jihad and holy war, primarily arithmetic and algebra for military setup and order, geometry for fortification, planar trigonometry and high geometry for measuring inaccessible places, and cone sections for tunnels…..139
The almost identical sentences are seen in the introduction of the geometry book written by a leading figure who graduated from Harbiye in 1859140 and taught painting during the second half of the nineteenth century, Osman Nuri Paşa (1839-1906)141, most probably just before his appointment as painting teacher at Harbiye. The importance attached to geometry at Harbiye is also clear in his sentences. This quotation also demonstrates the mindset instrumentalizing drawing classes as a part of the technical and scientific production for military concerns.
… As it can be understood from this sentence, military sciences, one of the biggest causes of jihad, reached a very advanced level during the time of our supreme sultan. The development of the sciences above should be sought in the development of geometry since everything is done and brought about by it, and
138 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Başhoca İshak Efendi, 50.
139 Emr-i hâtır-ı cihad ve gaza fi zemanın-i haza ulum-i talimiyeyi marifete menût olub şöyle ki evvela askerin tertibat ve tanzimatı ilm-i hesab ve ilm-i cebr ve mukabeleye varid ve istihkamatı ilm-i hendeseye ve gayr-i mümkünü’l-vusûl olan mahallerin mesahası ilm-i müsellesat-ı müsteviyyeye ve ilm-i hendese-i a’lâya ve lağım hafri ilm-i kutu-i mahrutiyata…
El-hac Hafız İshak, Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye, dibaçe, 3.
140 Pertev Boyar, Ressamlarımız: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devirlerinde Türk Ressamları, Hayatları ve Eserleri, (Ankara: Jandarma Basımevi, 1948), 35.
141 Osman Nuri Paşa (1839-1906) was appointed as aide-de-camp in his fourth year at Harbiye in 1857, also, continued to play his role as the palace painter. In 1882, he began to teach at idadis. It is known that he noted talented students in idadi classes and identified them to continue painting in Harbiye’s painting studio. Rather than his paintings, Osman Nuri Paşa is significant for the students he educated during years. He wrote a book titled Fenn-i Menazır ve Sulu Boya Tarifatı (Perspective and Water Color) in 1897. Sami Yetik, Ressamlarımız: Sanayi-i Nefise’den Asker Ressamlara Modern Türk Resminin İlk Ustaları, (İstanbul: Gram Yayınları, 2016), 34-6.
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even the combination of the things that constitute the details of military sciences is done thanks to geometry.142
Afterward, Derviş Paşa, the Chemist, contributed to the rising literature on physics and wrote a textbook to introduce the scope and methodology of physics to students in 1865. Leafing through the articles in Usûl-i Hikmet-i Tabîiyye points out that Derviş Paşa designed a very comprehensive book; he covered topics such as pendulums, force, liquid, solid and gases, elasticity, heat, electricity, magnets, and light in the book.143 The work has defined and tried to explain almost all the subjects of today's physics discipline. Derviş Paşa kept the definition level so that the reader can learn about the laws developed until that date. As a result, the work is a valuable textbook enriched with examples, its plain expression for “informing” and easy learning of scientific laws.144 İshak Efendi and Derviş Paşa explained the reverberation of light, laws of seeing, and the formation of shadow. These topics were the essential parts of nineteenth-century Ottoman painting. Painters, who graduated from Mekteb-i Harbiye, gained/consolidated the technical side of modern art in physics lessons rather than painting courses. Ottoman painters found the answer to the question about the relationship between light and object in İlm-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye classes by reading İshak Efendi and Derviş Paşa’s books.145
The last article in the third volume of Mecmua-i Ulum-ı Riyaziye belongs to ilm-i menazır (perspective/optics). The article mentions the nature, properties, reflection and refraction of light, colors, image formation, mirror types and some optical devices (fig.1). The optical information provided by İshak Efendi was close to the optical information given in science books published in France at the same time. For example, the information given in Baron Reynaud's book Traite Élémentaire de Mathématiques, de Physique et de Chimie published in 1824 and optical information about light in the second volume of his
142 Bu cümle-i mecelleden bir numune-i ayân olmak üzere eazım-ı esbab-ı cihadiyeden olan fünun-ı harbiye saye-i şevketvâye-i hazret-i padişahide bir mertebe-i vasıl-ı ser-menzil-i kemâl olmuşdur ki her şeyin sûret-i va’z ve teşkîli âyine-i hendesede cilve-ger ve müncelî olub hususuyla dakayık-ı fünûn-ı harbiyenin ecza-i mürekkebesi dahi ilm-i mezkurdan ibaret olmak mülabesesiyle fenn-i mezkurun terakkiyatını mutlaka ilm-i hendesenin kemalinde aramak lazım geleceğinden…Miralay Osman Nuri, Usul-i Cedide-i Hendese (Mekteb-i Harbiye-i Şahane Matbaası, 1874) preface, 2.
143 Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, (İstanbul: Darü’t-tıbbatü’l-amire, 1865), 1-2.
144 Seval Yinilmez Akgün, “The First Physics Textbook in Ottoman State: Usûl-ü Hikmet-i Tabiiye (Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature),” Turkish History Education Journal 2, no. 2 (2013): 71.
145 For a detailed discussion of the situation of modern physics in nineteenth century Ottoman Empire, see: Meltem Akbaş, “Osmanlı Türkiyesi’nde Modern Fizik (19. Yüzyıl),” (PhD. Diss. İstanbul Üniversitesi, 2008).
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work Traite Élémentaire de Mathématiques et de Physique published in 1839, were in harmony with İshak Efendi's book.146 There is also an emphasis on the light and optics in Derviş Paşa’s book. Diffusion, reflection, and refraction of light, plane mirrors, spherical mirrors, laws on lenses and binocular glasses, observation instruments, magnifying glasses, perspective instruments, the eye, the source of light were among the topics he elaborated on147 (fig. 2-5).
As abovementioned, Ottomans were educated in a belief based on scientific information; hence they always prioritized observing what they learned in these courses in every field. This was also closely related to the role of science as useful knowledge in the Ottoman mindset, which was based on the practice of information. In this framework, painting classes served less artistic impulses than the production and practice of scientific or technical knowledge. Therefore, the painting classes were instrumentalized by the Ottomans as a way of applying theoretical knowledge in art. As it will be detailed in the next chapter, the rigor on the light and perspective in the paintings seems to result from this education.
Fig. 1 A figure from the optics part of the same book, İshak Efendi, Mecmua-i Ulum-ı Riyaziye, vol.3, (İstanbul: Darü’t-tıbbatü’l-amire, 1832), plate 14.
146 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Başhoca İshak Efendi, 60.
147 Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, 1-2.
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Fig. 2 From optics and light part, Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, figure 210.
Fig. 3 Drawings on optics and light, Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, figure 197.
Fig. 4 Drawings on optics and light, Derviş Paşa’s same book, figure 17
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Fig. 5 Drawings on optics and light from Derviş Paşa’s same book, figure 244.
Architecture:
In addition to physics, paintings reflect the significance of exact knowledge gained from architecture courses. Militarily concerns behind these rigorous measures determined the content of classes. Students had theoretical and practical lessons in the curricula for weeks, and they learned to transfer land and constructions into papers without distorting proportions. As a result of this process, they prioritized the exactitude and accuracy of proportions in paintings. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to assert that topography, architecture, and painting classes fed each other and contributed to the development of realistic attitude at Mekteb-i Harbiye, as figures in textbooks of courses give clues about education (figs. 8-11).
Fenn-i Mimari was translated by lecturer Mehmed Rıfat, who was the assistant of the taksim-i arazi course and taught construction lessons to the infantry, cavalry, and artillery classes, into Turkish from Monsieur Leclercq148’s book. Leclercq was registered as the taksim-i arazi ve mimari (geodesy and architecture) teacher at the beginning of the translation. The book, which was the first textbook on architecture written in Turkish,149
148 Leclercq was an engineer spent many years in Constantinople. After his role as instructor at Harbiye, Monsieur Leclercq served at Nafia Nezareti (the Ministry of Public Works) as assisstant to the director. He kept his position with an addition as the Commisar of Tunnel between 1891-1907. Feza Günergun, “Mekteb-i Harbiye’de Okutulan Mimarlık ve İnşaat Bilgisi Dersleri İçin 1870’li Yıllarda Yazılmış Üç Kitap,” in Afife Batur’a Armağan: Mimarlık ve Sanat Tarihi Yazıları, edited by Deniz Mazlum, Aygül Ağar, Gül Cephanecigil (İstanbul: Literatür Yayınları, 2005).
149 Feza Günergun, “Mekteb-i Harbiye’de Okutulan…” 154.
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was published by the printing press of the Mekteb-i Harbiye in 1875/1876. According to the introduction part of the book, “architecture is not only an art branch but also a science because it is based on mathematics.”150 In the military context, the book’s content reflects almost completely the scientific side of architecture. After theoretical knowledge on architectural types (dwelling, naval or military) and set-up process (arrangement of maps, preparation of estimate book, and presentation of opinions), the book goes on with the practical part (construction). In these parts, Ottoman students found detailed information on materials used in architecture, components of buildings and their construction rules, soil types, arches and their thickness calculation, domes, pillars, and architectural styles (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, Tuscany, Arab)151 (fig. 8).
Fenn-i İnşaat ve Mimari is another textbook of this period. Süleyman Paşa, the Minister of Military Schools, assigned the teacher of construction, Captain Ahmed Şükri, to translate from Leclercq, considering it to be useful work. The dedication in the preface to Abdulhamid II suggests that it was 1876 or later. Ahmed Şükri puts the “roads and bridges” part from the work of André, a chief engineer, as an appendix to his translation. Leclercq's work must have been considered incomplete on roads and bridges.152 Except this, the book’s content is very similar to Mehmed Rifat’s translation.
Fig. 6 Architectural plan and detail from Ahmed Şükri’s Fenn-i Mimari. Ahmed Şükri, Fenn-i Mimari, (İstanbul: Mekteb-i Harbiye-i Şahane Matbaası, 1263/1847), figure 97.
150 Monsieur Leclercq, Fenn-i Mimari, translated by Mehmet Rifat, (Mekteb-i Fünun-ı Harbiye-i Hazret-i Şahane Matbaası, 1875), 2.
151 Feza Günergun, “Mekteb-i Harbiye’de Okutulan…,” 154-5.
152 Feza Günergun, “Mekteb-i Harbiye’de Okutulan….,” 156.
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Fig. 7 Architectural motifs from Ahmed Şükri’s Fenn-i Mimari. Ahmed Şükri, Fenn-i Mimari, figure 63.
Fig. 8 Drawings of arches, Monsieur Leclercq, Fenn-i Mimari, plate 20.
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These figures demonstrate that students of Harbiye not only focused on the proportions but also studied every single detail of architectural drawing. This elaborative approach in these courses was connected to the development of a realistic approach in art. Students of Mekteb-i Harbiye exercised their accumulation on architecture in their landscape paintings. Their production of numerous landscapes and smaller number of figurative paintings support this argument. In the next chapter, the reflection of this education on architecture will be obvious especially in painter Hüseyin Zekâi (1860-1919)153’s commissions.
Perspective:
Perspective lessons were one of the most important subjects in the entire curriculum. Although it appears as the most important component of the modern attitude in painting, it was also indispensable for the technical knowledge underlying military education. Aware of the importance of geometric drawings and perspective, Harbiye was trying to teach its students all the possibilities of passing the three-dimensional image to the two-dimensional plane without distorting the proportions as much as possible. For this reason, the great emphasis was attached to the theoretical and practical aspects of geometry, each perspective book provided associated geometric information. For example, İshak Efendi's book, Kavaid-i Ressamiye, which remained in the form of a manuscript, can shed light on the teaching technique that spread to Harbiye through Mühendishane. Written in the 1820s or 1830s, the book constitutes an important example as an attempt to realize the goals stated by İshak Efendi in Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye. The narrative starting with geometry refers to all types of technical drawing. Each lecture has been put into practice with the drill parts at the back of the book. Here, geometric shapes, drawing with a plane table, and depicting the plan of land are the main issues (fig. 9-11).
153 Hüseyin Zekâi (1860-1919) a painter of landscapes, architectural structures, and still-lifes. He began his education at Kuleli İdadisi. Osman Nuri Paşa and Süleyman Seyyid were his painting instructors there. After Harbiye, in 1883, he was appointed as aide to Şeker Ahmed Paşa. He accompanied Kaiser Wilhelm II on his trip to Syria. Moreover, commissioned to take photographs of military constructions. After Şeker Ahmed Paşa, became court painter and chamberlain. In 1908, he was also in the commission to establish military museum in the Hagia Irene. His book, Mübeccel Hazineler (Exalted Treasures, 1913) was one of the first examples in Turkish on cultural heritage, art history and archaeology. The most detailed work on him is Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa.”
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Fig. 9 The use of Plane Table, İshak Efendi, Kavaid-i Ressamiye, (İstanbul: n.d.), plate
7.
Fig. 10 On geometrical drawing, borders, shades, and other rules. İshak Efendi, Kavaidi
Ressamiyye, plate 14.
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Fig. 11 On paints, İshak Efendi, Kavaid-i Ressamiyye, plate 15.
Another work is the book titled İlm-i Menazır, which is also attributed to İshak Efendi. In the book’s introduction, there is a note of istinsâhü’l-fakîr (copied by) E's-Seyyid Mehmed Nuri, Muharrem 1276 (July / August 1859). Although there is no evidence that this book was used in lessons, it contains important data on how the concept of perspective was essential. İshak Efendi explained the concept of perspective mostly through buildings in this study. The author built his visualizations and exercises on the building and its elements, following the definitions of the line, angle, and view. How and according to which rules the lines will be drawn and the motives of drawing constitute the book’s essence. Based on this, the ways of drawing according to surfaces are explained, especially to gain skill in interior drawings. In addition, the way to restitute a building with a given perspective is also the subject of the book (fig. 12-15).
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Fig. 12 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır (1859), plate 1.
Fig. 13 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır, plate 7, fig. 18.
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Fig. 14 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır, plate 15, fig. 29.
Fig. 15 İshak Efendi, İlm-i Menazır, plate 17.
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These two sources show that the perspective lesson separately from the painting class at Harbiye was in line with the technical and scientific development rather than its relation to art. As can be understood from the titles and contents of the books, the painting/drawing referred to the technical aspect more than an artistic one. For example, the student who learned to draw on a plane table in Kavaid-i Ressamiye had the chance to learn the rules of perspective based on mekân (space) in the book İlm-i Menazır. Then, by feeding the theoretical and practical knowledge he had seen in architecture lessons improved himself a little more in terms of practice.
Since the late nineteenth-century, books regarding perspective together with painting techniques began to be published. A Harbiye-graduate, painter, and instructor of perspective at Sanayi-i Nefise, Ahmed Ziyaeddin (1869-1938)154 wrote Amelî Menazır (Practical Perspective) in 1896. This book was prepared in line with the curricula of Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi and Harbiye. In other words, it would continue to be one of the most important elements of artistic activity while forming the foundations of technical knowledge at Harbiye. Even if the thematic and practical concerns of the book is the same with the previous examples, it is obvious that it was prepared in more detail, and it was taken into consideration that Sanayi-i Nefise will use it. The book teaches how to take the perspective of three-dimensional geometric bodies after the perspective of a point, demonstrates how to take the perspective of walls and arches in later chapters, and bases its content entirely on architectural elements as previous examples by İshak Efendi (fig. 16-17). Wendy Shaw brought up another discussion related to this book. Considering the book's approach to perspective as a cultural translation, Shaw took Ahmed Ziyaeddin's definitions of perspective and vision as a fulcrum. She sees the problem as the result of religious hesitation:
Perspective: A practice which allows the drawing of an object as it is or would be upon paper.
To see: By hitting every point of an object, the rays of light that emerge from the eye merge into lines that merge with previous (similarly constructed)
154 Ahmet Ziya Akbulut (1869 - 1938) was landscape and architecture painter. He attended Kuleli İdadisi, then continued to Harbiye. There, Osman Nuri Paşa was his painting instructor. He was also an authority in astronomy and mathematics in his time, even, he had a manual on the construction of sundials. Since his skillful use of perspective in paintings, he was nicknamed as menazırcı (man of perspective). He served as the head of Harbiye Matbaası (Military Printing Office) and became the chairman of Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti (the Ottoman Society of Painters) in 1913. He retired from the military service next year and began to teach at Sanayi-i Nefise. Pertev Boyar, Ressamlarımız, 92-4.
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lines to form surfaces which come together side by side allow (also, set free-itlak) the solid form of the object in space (or air – hava) to be produced. Alternatively: the image /illusion (hayal) produced by light that emerges from somewhere hitting an object then reflected in a straight line and meeting the eye.155
According to Wendy Shaw, Ahmed Ziya adapted conflicting theories of sight and light, redefines sight as “a process projecting out of the individual,” and transforms the artist into “a scribe of perception rather than of predetermined, external, and objectifiable reality.”156 However, it does not seem possible at this point to speak of a hesitation caused by religious beliefs. Ahmed Ziyaeddin's definition of perspective must have emphasized "as it is or would be" because of an architectural concern. The progress of the book in this direction may be an indicator of such motivation. In addition, the existence of a perspective book that will support the applied parts of the architecture lessons taken by the students of Mekteb-i Harbiye is important in this respect. Again, considering Sanayi-i Nefise had also an architecture class, “how an object can appear” and “how it exactly appears” were equally significant for both schools. Because the students of both Harbiye and Sanayi-i Nefise also carried out applications on restitution, it was essential to reach a three-dimensional object from perspective data.
In addition, hesitations stemming from religious belief do not seem sufficient to explain the problem of subjectivity and perception in the definition of vision. Because in a book written by Âgâh Paşa (d. 1898)157 six years before the book of Ahmed Ziyaeddin for the perspective class at Harbiye, the author defines seeing as the process of light’s reflection directly from the object to the eye158. In addition, in Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, written by Derviş Paşa in 1865 and used as a textbook, the sight was explained as light
155 English translation by Wendy Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 94.
Menazır: Bir cismin şeklini, göründüğü veya görüneceği vechile, kâğıt üzerine çizmeği bildiren bir ilmdir. Görmek: Gözden çıkan şuâât cismin her noktasına çarparak bu noktaların birbirleriyle birleştiği hatlarının, ol hatların yek diğeriyle birleşmesinden hâsıl olan satıhlarının ve bu satıhların da yan yana gelmelerinden o cismin heva dâhilindeki şekl-i mücesseminin zihinde hâsıl olmasına ıtlak olunur; bir başka türlü tarifle: bir yerden çıkan ışıklar cisme çarpıp sonra müstakimen aks iderek göze vasıl olmasıyla hâsıl olan hayale denir. Ahmed Ziyaeddin, Amelî Menazır (İstanbul: Âlem Matbaası, 1896), 14.
156 Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 94.
157 Yusuf Âgâh Paşa (d. 1898) graduated from Harbiye, served as military attache to Paris, and the director of Mekteb-i Osmani (the School of Ottomans, 1857) in Paris. While teaching at Harbiye, he wrote booklets titled Sath-ı Rakım (1893), Usul-i Gölge (the Method of Shading, 1887), and Menazır (Perspective, 1888/9). Bursalı Mehmed Tahir Bey, “Agah Paşa: Erkan-ı Harbiye Mirlivası Yusuf Agah Paşa,” in Osmanlı Müellifleri, vol. 3, 251.
158 Her kangı bir cismden aks iden veya neşr olunan ziya göze vasıl olarak ol cismin görünmesine sebeb olur. Âgâh Paşa, Menazır (Mekteb-i Fünun-ı Harbiye-i Şahane Matbaası, 1888/1889), 2.
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reflected from the object reaching the eye159. At this point, considering mathematical
reality in the book, Ahmed Ziyaeddin only informed the reader. Because it is known that
these definitions and the subject of seeing he gave are taught in physics lessons in much
more detail.
Fig. 16 Ahmed Ziyaeddin, Amelî Menazır, plate 2.
Fig. 17 Ahmed Ziyaeddin, Amelî Menazır, plate 3.
Osman Nuri Paşa published Fenn-i Menazır ve Sulu Boya Tarifatı (Perspectival
Technique and Definitions of Watercolor) in 1897. In the prelude, Osman Nuri expresses
that perspective is the essential part of the painting, and even if students know how to
applicate this to paintings, they have problems in finding the right tones of colors:
159 Ziya dinilen şey uzv-ı basr olan gözün dahilinde vaki tabaka-i şebekeye ıtlak olunan gışaya tesir
ile rüyet dinilen keyfiyeti mucib olan madde olub bunun hakikat-i hali henüz malum değil ise de… Derviş
Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, 249.
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My decision to write this book is that my students had trouble finding the exact colors of the things they wanted to draw because there was no measure of how much dyes they would put in the mix and that the subject of perspective is the fundament of painting. Therefore, I wrote this book in two parts as colors and sorts of watercolor painting; and the essential parts of the perspectival technique.160
Evaluating the thoughts expressed in the preface of this book written by Osman Nuri Paşa together with the geometry book he wrote about twenty years before, this book will be useful in understanding where Harbiye positioned the painting class. As will be discussed in more detail later, Osman Nuri Paşa always told his students that soldiers who good at handicrafts were very important in the army. In the school, where a person who says geometry is the basis of military sciences has taught painting for nearly thirty years, the functionality of painting and its purpose becomes clear. This understanding constituted the basis for the studio functioning as a practice area rather than an art production center. In artist, art historian, and architect Şahabeddin Uzluk (d.1989)’s article on Hoca Ali Rıza, the most praised technical features of him are menazır-ı zihnî and amelî (perspective d'observation), menazır-ı itibarî (perspective cavaliére), menazır-ı hattî (perspective linaire) and usul-i talim-i şeklî ve tatbikî (graphique). Moreover, Şahabeddin labels Ali Rıza’s style as a complete realism.161 This is a clear indication of the importance attached to perspective lessons and practice by Harbiye, where the practice of perspectival rules as the basis of technical drawing was more significant than the landscape.162
160 Boyaların suret-i mezc ve terkibini ve katılan boya ve eczaların mikdarını irae eder surette elde bir mikyas olmamak hasebiyle talebe-i mumaileyhim tersimini arzu ettikleri şeylerin rengini bulmak hususunda düçar-ı müşkilat olmakta olduklarından ve fenn-i menazır ise ressamlığın mabeü’l tekmili idüğünden resimde kullanılacak sulu boyaların elvan ve envaıyla suret-i halet ve mezcini ve fenn-i menazırın en elzem olan mebahisini muarref ve meş’er olmak üzere iş bu risalenin iki kısmı havi tertibine ibtidar kılındı. Ressam Mirliva Osman Nuri, Fenn-i Menazır ve Sulu Boya Tarifatı (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Osmaniyye, 1897), 2.
161 Şehabeddin, “Türk Muasır Ressamlarından Üstad A. Rıza Bey,” Servet-i Fünun 1469 (1921): 148.
162 Semra Germaner, “Osmanlı Manzara Resminde Mekan Yorumu,” in Mekanın Poetikası, Mekanın Politikası, edited by Zeynep İnankur, Reina Lewis, and Mary Roberts (İstanbul: Pera Müzesi, 2011), 235.
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CHAPTER II THE ROLE OF PAINTING
In the Production of Topographical Knowledge
“Here, above Dolma Baghche, the favourite pursuit seemed to be drawing: I never saw the boys doing anything else. On our first visit we found, in two rooms, from fifty to sixty pupils copying French prints—fancy portraits of women as well as of men, landscapes, architectural pieces, ruins, ornaments, scrolls, flowers, fruit, wild beasts, &c. The correctness of some of these copies, and the neatness of execution, were commendable. Some of these poor fellows, who never saw any object of art until they came here, had been only six or eight months under tuition. A few of the elder pupils were working in acquarella, copying coloured prints with French water-colours; but most of them were drawing with charcoal, or black French chalk….”163
As seen in Mac Farlane’s sentences, the emphasis on copying and proper execution demonstrates the motivation at Harbiye. In parallel with the curricula, what they copied is mostly architectural pieces, flowers, fruits rather than figures. The executions aimed to produce “topographic layouts and technical drawings for military purposes. There obviously must have been a need for the officers to be acquainted with the techniques of mapping, engraving, and carving.”164 In other words, as Shaw points out that “the aim was not to revolutionize visual culture but to adopt Western techniques for military objectives.”165 Therefore, the painting was already built as a functional class to develop students’ talents at handiworks along with geometrical thinking. Although the graduates of Ottoman military schools, particularly Mekteb-i Harbiye, directed, Ottomanized, and consolidated the modernization in art, the aim of their education in painting was not to cultivate artists but to graduate them as skillful military staff. According to this understanding, the Ottoman center planned to indoctrinate generations
163 Charles Mac Farlane, Turkey and its Destiny: The Result of Journeys Made in 1847 and 1848 to Examine into the State of that Country, vol II (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), 173-174.
164 Turan Erol, “Painting in Turkey 19th and Early 20th Century,” 92.
165 Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 32.
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in accordance with the concurrent intellectual developments in the European intellectual milieu. Consequently, a functional/required realism fed by scientific thinking developed in Ottoman painting. Hence, military painters prioritized augmenting nature on canvas, documented their environs, and produced paintworks based on observation. Documentation was the main concern in Ottoman illustrated manuscripts throughout the centuries. However, the novelty in the nineteenth century was the documentation of nature scientifically. Conditions surrounding the developing realism formulated it to be a part of scientific and technical production, to produce visual data, and to visualize objective observation.
Osman Nuri Paşa was in a belief that not to paint is a fault for an officer, and not to be interested in painting was a lack of lore. According to memories of his students, Osman Nuri always talked about the prestige of the officers who were good at handicrafts in the army; and emphasized the need for an accurate and proper sketch in the profession.166 This meticulousness in precision indispensably reflected on painters’ works during and after school life as the documentation of topographical and architectural elements.
In 1879, upon the demand by students, Ali Rıza (Hoca) and his friends such as Hüseyin Zekâi and Hasan Rıza, to the minister of schools Edhem Paşa, a painting studio at Harbiye was opened, and Osman Nuri Paşa became the head of it. Paintings produced within a year were presented to Sultan Abdulhamid II and appreciated by him.167 The next year, another famous painter graduated from Harbiye, Süleyman Seyyid (1842-1913)168, replaced Osman Nuri and forbade working from models. Then, he orientated students to paint landscapes.169 As known from the previous examples, Osman Nuri instrumentalized painting in his classes for drawing accurate geometrical shapes. Süleyman Seyyid’s decision to teach painting landscapes seems to demonstrate the same motivation.
The biggest instance of this practice is the great similarity between the examples in the textbooks used in map drafting lessons and the paintings produced by graduates
166 Sami Yetik, Ressamlarımız, 35.
167 Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 49-50.
168 Süleyman Seyyid (1842-1913) was a Harbiye graduate, famous for his landscape and still-life paintings. He was sent to Paris during his Harbiye years, he got educated at Mekteb-i Osmani and Ecole des Beaux Arts. After his return, taught painting at Harbiye, Kuleli İdadi, then he moved to Tıbbiye in 1884 and taught painting for twenty-six years. Seyyid was referred as ‘métrologiste’ by his students as his attention to geometrical compositions and perspective. Sami Yetik, Ressamlarımız, 50-5.
169 Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 92.
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during their military service period. For example, the topographical shapes and their mapped examples given in the book titled Haritalar Tersimi Atlası (Atlas of Map Construction) written by Ali Haydar almost completely coincide with the motivation in the landscape paintings. Especially, the places chosen for painting were inspired by the samples in the book. Comparisons between the figures from eighteen to twenty-six show that the painters put their theoretical and practical training into practice once again. For example, the similarity between the figures eighteen and nineteen is considerable. The photography serving this painting as model was found in the archives. This means that Mustafa, the painter, did not use the drawing in the textbook as his model. However, it can still demonstrate that determining to depict the garden from that angle could be inspired by these kinds of examples in the textbooks. The same relationship between the figures twenty and twenty-one points out that Harbiye had a determinative position in the visual production. Numerous Fenerbahçe Point landscape paintings cannot be denied; however, the presence of this similarity is striking enough to think again. The problematic side is that the textbook was written in 1894, which is very late for being a model for instructors of the time such as Hoca Ali Rıza, or Süleyman Seyyid. Moreover, we don’t know the exact dates of many paintings that could be modelled after this textbook. Therefore, it isn’t possible to argue that these paintings were totally inspired by the drawings in the textbook; however, they are still crucial examples to understand/reflect the mechanism behind the concept of landscape’s significance and meaning.
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Fig. 18 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, (Kostantiniyye: Matbaa-i Ebüzziya, 1894), 40.
Fig. 19 Mustafa, Yıldız Palace Garden, 72.5x91cm, Painting and Sculpture Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 109.
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Fig. 20 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, 42.
Fig. 21 Cemal, Fenerbahçe Point, 68x98 cm, oil on canvas, National Palaces Collection. Gülsen Sevinç Kaya (ed.), Milli Saraylar Tablo Koleksiyonu (İstanbul: TBMM Milli Saraylar, 2010), 128.
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Fig. 22 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, 40.
Fig. 23 Ahmet Şekür, Yıldız Palace, 1890s, oil on canvas, Painting and Sculpture Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 102.
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Fig. 24 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, plate 4.
Fig. 25 Süleyman Seyyid, Landscape from Erenköy, oil on canvas, 29x112 cm, Sakıp
Sabancı Museum Collection, No.200-0097-SSE.
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Fig. 26 Şekûr Kulları, Önünden dere geçen bir köy [View of a village with a river], undated, oil on canvas, collection MSGSÜ Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture. Berin Gölönü, “Images with a Second Life”, 111, fig.1.
In the figures twenty-four, twenty-five, and twenty-six, although there is no resemblance between the places, composition elements and panoramic view give clues for the motivation. Topographical analysis and map construction technique of the same place in the twenty-fourth figure seem like a prelude to the endeavor for topographical accuracy in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth figures. The book titled Küçük Plançete (Small Plane Table) written by İbrahim Halil is a very important example in terms of visualizing the applied parts of the map-drawing lessons in military schools (fig. 27-28). It shows where the student worked on the planchet in the field, how put the drawing rules into practice, and how the painting played a role in this context. At this point, it can be argued that military painters gained functional skills rather than finding individual paths, and the aim of working in nature is to grasp the topography correctly.170
170 In an effort to construct an essentially true copy of nature on a scale and in a medium appropriate for inclusion in a palatial setting with new, Western architecture, interior design, and furniture, the paintings suppressed style in favor of a literal realism devoid of the effects of any visual tradition, such as oil painting, photography, or Ottoman practices. Emerging from a military environment with no tradition of visual production, these paintings repressed the possibility of subjectivity implied by the concept of style. After all, what empowers a soldier is his ability to exist not as an individual subject, but as the executor of state will. In the earliest cohort of Ottoman paintings, the artist was not there. Ottoman copied lithographs, enamel paintings and even postcards. Neither from nature nor the work of earlier ones. Not a combination
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Fig. 27 İbrahim Halil, Küçük Plançete (İstanbul: Mekteb-i Fünun-i Harbiye Matbaası,
1894), plate 3.
Fig. 28 Ali Haydar, Haritalar Tersimi Atlası, plate 8.
Another issue to explain these similarities between the textbook and paintings is
commissions by the palace reflecting the aims of training at Harbiye. For example, the
of observation and idealization like European counterparts. …What they created was less art than painting.
It aimed not to tame the foreignness of objects, but the foreignness of culture, not through imagery but
through their presence in newly created Western-style domestic environments. Wendy M.K. Shaw,
Ottoman Painting, 33.
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Söğüt Expedition in 1886, conducted to document tribal roots and “genuine” ancestors of the Ottoman Empire and prepared albums at the end of the expedition. Mehmed Emin Bey (d.1925), kurenâ (chamberlain) and kitâbî-i şehriyârî (librarian to the sultan) was the head of the group, which was comprised of ten military officers. Two of them were photographers and three were painters.171 These five members were Emin Efendi, a painting instructor at the mühendishane; Ahmed Şekûr Efendi (1856-?), teaching painting, etching, and fencing at Harbiye; Ahmed Bey, who was a painting and photography instructor at the mühendishane; Haydar Efendi associate instructor of painting and photography at the mühendishane; and Ali Rıza Efendi, instructor of oil painting at the Harbiye.172
The format and structure of the Söğüt albums provided the universal norms of scientific photography. The formulaic and academic configuration of the album contributed to the political control and efficiency in the mapping of the empire and projected a globally acknowledged image of veracity and scientificness.173 Interestingly, the sultan not only commissioned photographs but also wished to see “other pictures”, which mean paintings. As this situation demonstrates, photography and painting were in an equal position in terms of accurate documentation of the visual world for the sultan .174
There are two major representatives of paintings produced during and after this expedition. Ahmed Şekûr’s landscape painting depicting a village (fig. 26), with its rigorously treated details, proves the role of painters in the production of knowledge and documentation. It is feasible to esteem this paintwork as a technical drawing that augmented the visual data recorded by the photograph.175 Ahmed Şekûr’s educational background as a pupil of Hoca Ali Rıza and the emphasis on surveillance, map-making, and topography classes at the Harbiye seem to reflect in the details of this landscape. The painting focuses on the Sakarya River and showing the buildings of Lefke nestled into
171 Ahmet Ersoy, “The Sultan and His Tribe: Documenting Ottoman Roots in the Abdülhamid II Photographic Albums”, in Ottoman Arcadia: The Hamidian Expedition to the Land of Tribal Roots (1886), ed. Bahattin Öztuncay and Özge Ertem, (İstanbul: Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), 2018), 38.
172 Ibid., 39.
173 Ibid., 43.
174 Berin Gölönü, “Images with A Second Life: Photographs of the Hüdavendigar Province that Became Landscape Paintings”, in Ottoman Arcadia: The Hamidian Expedition to the Land of Tribal Roots (1886), ed. Bahattin Öztuncay and Özge Ertem, (İstanbul: Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), 2018).109.
175 Ibid., 116.
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the bend. Almost every detail that can provide objective knowledge about the village is visible in the painting. The river at low tide, countability of the roofs, and the readability of the topography on the depiction give a panorama of water supply, population, and economic significance of the region.176
In the same manner with Ahmet Şekûr, paintings of Ertuğrul Gazi’s tomb (fig. 29-30) by Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa were indicators of documentative and objective approach. Zekâi Paşa depicted the tomb to highlight details that cannot be clearly seen in the photograph (fig. 31-32). examined the tomb’s physical appearance and reflected its disrepair situation realistically.177
Fig.29 Zekâi Kulları, Söğüt Ertuğrul Gazi Türbesi [Söğüt, Mausoleum of Ertuğrul Gazi], undated, oil on canvas, collection Ankara State Museum of Painting and Sculpture. Berin Gölönü, “Images with a Second Life” 115, fig. 5.
176 Berin Gölönü, “Images with A Second Life,” 116.
177 Berin Gölönü, “Images with A Second Life,” 117.
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Fig. 30 Zekâi Kulları, Mescit [Masjid], undated, oil on canvas, collection MSGSÜ Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture. Berin Gölönü, “Images with a Second Life” 112, fig. 2.
Fig. 31 “Tomb of Ertuğrul Gazi in the environs of Söğüt.” Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Abdul Hamid II Collection, LC-USZ62-81513. Ahmet Ersoy, “The Sultan and His Tribe” 45, fig. 9.
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Fig. 32 “His Royal Highness Ertuğrul Gazi’s Mausoleum situated in Söğüt (before repairs)”, Ahmet Ersoy, “The Sultan and His Tribe” 45, fig. 10.
Zekâi Paşa was a member of an older generation educated at Harbiye, he was a pupil of Osman Nuri Paşa and Süleyman Seyyid Bey until 1881. It is obvious that he was a student at Harbiye during late 1870 and educated in the curriculum that was brought above in table 3. He continued his duty at Yıldız Palace alongside Şeker Ahmed Paşa (1841-1907)178, who was a palace painter at that time.179 Also, Hoca Ali Rıza, the third painter in the group and the teacher of Ahmed Şekûr, was a student at Harbiye in the same years with Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa and pupil of the same instructors. Their realistic documentation in this mission demonstrates both their “future artistic tendencies” and the perception of painting as a visual data source. There could be a counter - argument
178 (Şeker) Ahmed Ali Paşa (1841-1907) entered Tıbbiye in 1855, then transferred to Harbiye and graduated in 1865. Here, his medical and military experience having aroused an interest in anatomy and perspective. Sultan Abdülaziz liked his work and sent him to Paris to study under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme. He spent seven years of study in France, and had an exhibition of his oil paintings in Paris in 1869. He returned to Istanbul in 1871. In 1873 and 1875, he organized first art exhibits open to public in Istanbul, also, thanks to his network in Paris, he ordered paintings to establish an art collection at the Palace. Ahmed Paşa advanced rapidly in military rank, served as aide-de-camp at the Ottoman Palace for years. He painted nature-related subjects such as forests, fruits, flowers, and animals with great skill. His life and art reflected the experience of Ottoman elites in the aftermath of the Tanzimat reform movement, Pasha was an example of such emulation and blending in the field of painting. The most detailed work on his life and works, Ilona Baytar, and Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (eds.), Şeker Ahmet Paşa 1841-1907.
179 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 92.
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asserting that the paintings produced in this mission were commissioned by the sultan as visual data, hence, they had to be objective, scientific and documentative. However, extending the research towards painters’ tendencies figures out that they were in the same attitude in their personal lives and initiatives. For instance, in 1892, when Hüseyin Zekâi was commissioned to take photos of all military buildings in the Empire, he wrote a petition to the sultan to extend the scope of the project, and set up a commission to survey all mines, flora, the architecture of the regions:
“My sultan, today, when someone wants to learn about the beautiful works of the past, there are many illustrated works created with the efforts of Europeans. Muslims cannot see any of the architectural beauty of the Ottoman Empire in these works, as they are written in a Western language and filled only with Western architecture. When a Muslim wants to know and examine Ottoman historical works, in whichever Ottoman libraries he goes, they cannot reach enough and complete information.”180
Probably after this request, Zekâi Paşa was commissioned to visualize antiquities and natural landscapes. This task includes both photographing and drawing pictures and plans, which were important in Harbiye's programs and were used in jobs where soldiers were assigned afterwards.181 These photographs, which are understood to have been taken
180 Padişahım, bugün geçmişteki güzel yapıtlara dair bilgi edinmek istenildiği vakit Avrupalıların gayretiyle meydana getirilen görselli pek çok eserler bulunabilmektedir. Batılı bir dilde yazılmış olduğu gibi sadece Batı mimarisiyle dolu olduklarından Müslümanlar bu eserlerde Osmanlı’nın mimari güzelliğinden hiçbirini görememektedirler. Müslüman bir kimse Osmanlı tarihi eserlerini bilmek ve incelemek istediği zaman Osmanlı kütüphanelerinden hangisine giderse gitsin bu kütüphanelerin güzel sanatlara ait mecmuaların hiçbirinde yeterli ve tam bilgiye ulaşamamaktadır. Özlem İnay Erten, Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa ve Mübeccel Hazineler, (İstanbul: Bozlu Art Project, 2018), 22.
181 Şeref-südûr ve müte‛allik buyurulan irâde-i merâhim-‛âde-i cenâb-ı tâcdârî iktizâ-yı celili vechile ‛abd-i memlûkleri makâm-ı vâlâ-yı seraskeriye lede'l-mürâca‛a fotoğraflar için lüzum görülecek alât ve edevât ve levazımât-ı sâ’irenin mübâya‛asına mahsûs olmak üzere şimdilik 25.000 guruş i‛tâ kılınmış ve refakât-ı ‛abîdânemde bulunması îcâb eden zabitân kullarının ise taraf-ı memlûkânemden intihâb edilmesi ifade-i şifâhiye-i seraskerî iktizâsından bulunmuş ve ol suretle ezkiyâ-yı zabitândan olup her husûsta iktidar ve liyâkatleri müsellem olan zabitân-ı bendegân kullarının esâmîleri ma‛rûzdur fermân.
Mekteb-i Harbiye-i şâhâneleri resim mu‛âvini Kolağası Ali Rıza Efendi kulları
Bu dahi Mekteb-i İdadi-i Harbî-i şâhâneleri resim mu‛âvinlerinden Yüzbaşı Hasan Rıza Efendi kulları
Bu dahi Mekteb-i İdadi-i Harbiye-i şâhâneleri lisan mu‛âvinlerinden Yüzbaşı vekili Ratib Efendi kulları
Bu dahi Bahriye-i şâhâneleri inşâatında Yüzbaşı İsmail Hakkı Efendi kulları
Bu dahi Mekteb-i İdadi-i Harbî-i şâhâneleri dâhiliye zabitânından Mülâzım-ı evvel Hakkı Efendi kulları
Bu dahi Bahriye-i şâhâneleri erkân-ı harbiyesinde Mülâzım-ı evvel Mehmed Efendi kulları
Bu dahi Mekteb-i Harbiye-i şâhâneleri fotoğraf mu‛allimi mülkiyeden Rifat Efendi kulları
Bâb-ı vâlâ-yı seraskerîleri levâzım dördüncü şubesi ketebesinden Nazmi Efendi kulları
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at the request of Abdulhamid II, are historical documents containing architectural works, nature landscapes, mosques, architectural elements such as altars, pulpits, fountains, mansions, fountains, and tombs belonging to these works in various cities. There are photographs signed as Zekâî in this album with information about where the photographs were taken.182 In his paintings, Zekâi Paşa pursued the same attitude and wanted to document them to transmit to the next generations.183 He mostly worked from photography in his painting production. These commissions provided him with the necessary visual material. Hüseyin Zekâî Paşa's name was also mentioned in the 1893 Chicago Exhibition, which was one of the important international events of the period. Among the photo albums sent to this exhibition are the photo albums prepared by Ali Rıza Bey and Hüseyin Zekâî Paşa.184 As in painting of the Tomb of Ertuğrul Gazi (fig.29-30), he painted the Abdulhamid I Fountain (fig. 33), and the Ahmed III Fountain (fig. 34). His realistic approach intersected with his admiration for Ottoman architectural works, and endeavor for their documentation in a scientific manner. This coincides with his discourse in the book, Mübeccel Hazineler (Exalted Treasures).185 He worked to reshape the intellectual and artistic milieu, consolidate the position of painting in the Ottomans’ eyes, and transformed painting into a tool for the engrain of modern ideas of the late nineteenth century.
Fotoğraflar emâkin-i ‛atîka ve cedîde ve tarihin göstereceği eşyâ-yı ‛atîka-i Osmanî ve tabî‛atın latîf manzaralarını ve âsâr-ı ‛umrân-ı mâziye safahâtının elde edilebilecek her nev‛ numûnelerinden yağlı ve sulu boyalar ile mimârî esliha melbusât mensucât ve eşyâ-yı nefîseyi renk-i aslîleriyle irâe eden musavver albümler teşkîli ve fenn-i mimârî-i Osmanî ve ma‛deniyât ve coğrafya-yı tabî‛î resim ve planları ve bunlara aid izâhât ve tafsilât tertîb ve takdîm-i huzûr-ı ‛âlî-i cenâb-ı hilâfet-penâhî kılınacağından yine her halde irâde ve fermân velînimet-i cihân-ı şevket-meâb pâdişâhımız efendimiz hazretlerinindir.
Yâver-i cenâb-ı hazret-i şehriyârîlerinden piyâde kâim-i makâmı kulları
Hüseyin Zekâî
Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,”105-6.
182 Ibid., 112.
183 Ibid., 93. Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 98.
184 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 117.
185 Ressam Zekâi, Mübeccel Hazineler, (Dersaadet: Şems Matbaası, 1913).
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Fig. 33 Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, The Abdulhamid I Fountain, 1906, oil on canvas,100x78cm, Dolmabahçe Palace Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 119.
Fig. 34 Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, Ahmed III Fountain, undated, oil on canvas, İşbank Collection, Ankara. Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 226.
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Here, the painting lesson report prepared by Hoca Ali Rıza and Hasan Rıza in 1899 can be cited as an example, especially thinking together with the Süleyman Seyyid’s attitude at the painting studio underlining landscape paintings, the report becomes more meaningful. Most probably, these teachers aimed to train students in parallel with technical drawing lessons in nature by guiding their students in developing their drawing skills to document their environment and become more skillful officers acquainted with mapping, measuring, and limning. The report, which recommends that students drawing outside and from nature as much as possible, emphasizes the importance of making a perfect copy of nature:
It shows that a guidebook, which is likely to be made under the name of Drawing Guide, such as the book called "Guide to Children" in the Turkish Writing class, is also necessary to be used in the painting class. Students should be kept under serious supervision during the study, and if possible, it should be ensured that the drawing method of a model that is liked in nature should be shown by the teacher first by going out to the open air, and then all the students should continue to work on this model. Students will make a perfect comparison. Naturally, when some of his flaws occur, he will understand his shortcomings and will take a step forward by showing the necessary work effort.186
186 Hüsn-i hatt-ı Türki’deki Rehber-i Sıbyan adlı kitap gibi Rehber-i Tersim ismiyle yapılması muhtemel olan rehber niteliğindeki bir kitabın resim dersinde de kullanımının gerekli olduğunu göstermektedir. Öğrenciler çalışma esnasında ciddi bir şekilde gözetim altında tutulmalıdır ve mümkünse okul dışında açık havaya çıkılarak, doğadan beğenilen bir modelin çizim yönteminin once öğretmen tarafından gösterilmesi, daha sonra öğrencilerin tümünün bu model üzerinde çalışmayı sürdürmeleri sağlanmalıdır… Öğrenciler yeterli derecede liyakat ve maharetle yapılmış bulunan tablolar nezdinde pek mükemmel surette kıyaslama yapacak ve doğal olarak bazı kusurları meydana çıktığında kendi eksikliklerini anlar ve ona nazaran sarfı lazım gelen çalışma gayretini göstererek ileri bir adım atar. 15 K.S. 1314 / 27 Ocak 1899. Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 58-59.
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In the Production of Scientific Knowledge
In this process, Ottoman painters linked painting with science during their studentship. After their graduation, these painters became active members of the production of scientific knowledge. Hüseyin Remzi (1839-1896)187, a medical doctor and instructor at Mekteb-i Tıbbiye (Imperial Medical School), praised charcoal pencil drawings and emphasized their importance in the printing press:
“Talented people of the art world are separated into two parts. The first group is oil painters, and the second one is draughtsman. Draughtsman is called as dessinateur in French. The draughtsman is very important for the printing world. The reason is that the pencil drawings are being printed in newspapers and magazines in today’s world. Depictions ornamenting illustrated publications, except photography, are all belonged to him. Therefore, from the printing point of view, draughtsman and watercolor painters are more significant for us.”188
The images (fig. 35-36) are from two books, İlm-i Nebatat (Botanics) and Tarih-i Tabii (The Natural History) written by Hüseyin Remzi. He published the article and these two books in the same year, in 1892. The emphasis on the contribution of draughtsman/painters to the production of scientific knowledge demonstrates that they played several roles at the same time, beyond producing artworks for art’s sake. Therefore, they developed their concerns less on the artistic field, than on the scientific base. Considering Hüseyin Remzi taught together with Süleyman Seyyid Bey, one of the most famous painters who graduated from the Harbiye in 1865189, Hüseyin Remzi was in close contact with Seyyid’s network and got help for drawings in the book.
187 Hüseyin Remzi (1839-1896) graduted from Tıbbiye and taught zoology, botanics, mines, and physiology at this school, healthcare at Harbiye and zoology at Darüşşafaka. He was sent to Paris, Pasteur Institute for following the latest developments in rabies and microbiology. Hüseyin Remzi also became a member of the famous group of scholars, La Société Asiatique. His works disseminated modern medical knowledge in Constantinople; he studied mostly on zoology, botanics, parasitology, microbiology, veterinary, history of medicine, and healthcare. For more information, Emre Karacaoğlu, “Hüseyin Remzi Bey ve Hüseyin Hüsnü Bey'in Mikrob adlı Yapıtı ve Türk Tıp Bilimine Katkıları,” (MA thesis. Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2013).
188 San’at-resme intisab etmiş ehl-i hüner evvela umumiyet itibarı ile ikiye taksim olunur. Bunların birincisi yağlı boyacılar, ikincisi kara kalemcilerdir.… Kara kalemcilere Fransızca (desinatör) derler. Desinatörler matbuata taalluk eden cihetçe daha mühimdir. Zira el yevm neşriyat-ı musavvereyi tezyin eden tesavirin fotoğraftan menkul olanlarından maadası hep iş bu ehl-i hüner yedinden çıkar, binaenaleyh tabii olarak resimli gazete nokta-i nazarından kara kalem ve sulu boya resim yapanlar bizce daha mühim addolunur. Hüseyin Remzi, “Yeni Tarz-ı Tersim”, Servet-i Fünun, no. 57 (1892), 75.
189 S. Pertev Boyar. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devirlerinde Türk Ressamları, 42.
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Fig. 35 Botanical drawings, Hüseyin Remzi, İlm-i Nebatat, (İstanbul: Karabet Matbaası,
1308 / 1892) figs. 26, 33, and 50.
Fig. 36 Drawings of several species, Hüseyin Remzi, Tarih-i Tabii, (İstanbul: Karabet
Matbaası, 1308 / 1892), figures 29, 9, and 23.
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Although this article of Hüseyin Remzi Bey was not written directly for military painters, it reflects the whole atmosphere of the environment he is in. The important point here is that Hüseyin Remzi's discourse shows how painting was instrumentalized in the modern education system of the Ottoman Empire. The process, which aims to make painters a part of knowledge production, can also be an indicator of the training aims of Harbiye students, who constantly try to copy nature in painting classes. Considering the specific plant species that can be predicted by the veterinarian classes in nebatat resimleri (flora drawings) classes, and the plant, fruit and landscape copying processes that Mac Farlane mentioned in the school's painting classes, Hüseyin Remzi's discourse fits into a wider context. Another point that makes us think that this is a necessity is that, for example, the illustrations of the book İlm-i Nebatat ve Hayvanat, translated by Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi (1816-1895) in 1865 from Dr. Carl Arendts' book Elements d'Histoire Naturelle for high school teaching, 190 could not be drawn but copied directly (fig. 37-38).
Fig. 37 Asuman Baytop, and Feza Günergun, “Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi..,” figure 4.
190 Asuman Baytop, and Feza Günergun, “Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi (1816-1895) ve Botanikle İlgili Yayınları,” Osmanlı Bilimi Araştırmaları, no.2, (1998): 296-303.
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Fig. 38 Asuman Baytop, and Feza Günergun, “Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi..,” figure 8.
This can offer a new perspective for the backgrounds of still-life tables. The two paintings below are particularly interesting at this point as a mixture of landscape and still life, which Sezer Tansuğ justifies it as a result of a hesitation about en plein air painting, while Wendy Shaw argues that the reason was the production in the studio due to time constraints. To be a little more explanatory, Tansuğ says that he finds the atmosphere arising from this merge close to surrealism. The painter, who had to work in his studio due to the social context, fused these two genres as a compensation method.191 Wendy Shaw's explanation is based directly on the studio dynamics and the workload of being a court painter: “…the forest in the background appears flat, as though it were a backdrop in front of which fruit had been arranged in a studio. This may simply reflect his studio practice. In contrast to Süleyman Seyyid's adamant adherence to naturalist depiction, once in the service of the palace, Ahmet Ali had little time to spend wandering in the forests and copying from nature, so he created a natural environment in his studio, replete with potted plants and caged birds.”192 However, both explanations are inadequate to comprehend the motivation beyond the merge of still-life and landscape genres.
191 Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 94.
192 Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 62.
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Compared to the examples in Hüseyin Remzi's book, the paintings of Hamdi Kenan and Şeker Ahmed (fig. 39-40) fit into a wider context. Because two painters from two different contexts, Şeker Ahmed, a soldier who graduated from Harbiye, and Hamdi Kenan, a graduate of Sanayi-i Nefise, meet in a common composition style. In particular, the functional attitude is in parallel with the animal and plant designs enlarged to give a detailed image in their natural environment adapted by Hüseyin Remzi and the painter’s compositions placed in a natural environment. Contribution to scientific production may have also inspired the expanding artistic activity. Hamdi Kenan's painting is an example of this. Şeker Ahmed, who was trained already with this motivation, has mostly gathered his way from these points (fig. 57).
Especially after the late 1870s, Ottoman painters began to work in nature, which is a method called d’après nature based on immediate observation of nature. Under these circumstances, nature transformed into an object of knowledge in the Ottoman mindset. In his same book, Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye, İshak Efendi defined physics as a science that “examines the intrinsic attributions of natural beings. Nature, moreover, consists of all things whose presence is perceived. Since the things perceived by human senses are only material assets, the subject of physics is observing and studying the material things.”193 On the modern scientific ground, the new generation subjected the material world to observation and study. The most distinguishing feature of this coterie was their concentration on the material world under the light of modern scientific techniques. Approximately twenty years later, in Usul-i Hikmet Tabiiyye, Derviş Paşa defined physics more intimately as a science that “investigates the relations of natural things in the world of appearance and degradation, the principles and results of these relations, and the rules and knowledge to which they are bound.”194 This attention to detail demonstrates that Ottoman painters, during their education at Harbiye, learned to study nature materialistically and observe it to detect the relationship between things in the material world. At the macro-level, landscape paintings provided detecting these relationships, and at the micro-level, still-life paintings did the same (fig.41). While composing their paintings, they redefined and reexplored the relationships in nature. The adaptation of this new type of knowledge and methodology created an intellectual mindset in which
193 El-hac Hafız İshak Efendi, Mecmua-i Ulum-ı Riyaziye, vol. 3 (İstanbul: Darü’t-tıbbatü’l-amire, 1832), 380.
194 Derviş Paşa, Usul-i Hikmet-i Tabiiyye, 2.
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empirical and global knowledge is dominant. The mindset shaped by natural sciences in the curriculum of Harbiye also determined the framework of painting during the nineteenth century. This situation also explains the fact that most of those mentioned as painters in the biographies written by Sami Yetik and Pertev Boyar are not oil painting or light-shadow masters but are skilled in design and watercolor painting who were awarded for the maps and plans they have drawn.195
Fig. 39 Şeker Ahmed Paşa, The Quinces, 1904, oil on canvas, İşbank Collection, Ankara. Turan Erol, “Turkish Painting,” 100.
195 Military painters such as Hafız İbrahim (1859-1917), Hafız Ali Paşa (1842- ), Cihangirli Mustafa (1838- ? ), Ahmet Ziya Akbulut (1869-1938), Kaymakam Remzi (1869-1937), Balatlı Ahmet Bedri (1871- ?) were praised mostly thanks to their skills in pencil drawing. For more, see Sami Yetik, Ressamlarımız, 33-71.
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Fig. 40 Hamdi Kenan, Landscape with Watermelons, oil on canvas. ykl. 60x40 cm. Private Collection. Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 94.
Fig. 41 Süleyman Seyyid, Still-life, Gülay İnce, “Süleyman Seyyid: Türk Resminde Natürmort Öncüsü,” (Master’s Thesis, Marmara Üniversitesi, 2000), 169.
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In the Industrial Production
A group, including military painters, also played a role in painting’s association with industrialization movements. As production and progress were prioritized rather than artistic concern for them, they saw modern painting techniques as a part of the production.196 This situation, although some exceptions, resulted in the functionality of painting being prioritized in a wide political and intellectual environment. Yıldız Çini Fabrika-i Hümayunu’s (Yıldız Imperial Factory of Tiles) main production started after 1894. Yıldız Factory was founded with the idea of meeting the porcelain needs of palaces and pavilions.197 The Factory’s products were instruments to prove the Ottoman Empire’s power to Europe and aimed to construct a modern imperial image to the world through displaying industrialization movements. Most of the factory's technical staff came from the Sèvres Factory in France.198 Apart from some painters from France, the Ottoman palace and Sanayi-i Nefise also were provided personnel to support the factory, and some of the students worked here for a certain period to practice.199 In the factory, artists formed the very delicate link between technology and arts.200 Indeed, famous military painters such as Osman Nuri Paşa, Şeker Ahmed Paşa, Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, Hoca Ali Rıza were part of the production process in which industrialization and modern paintings amalgamated. For example, Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa began to work as a porcelain painter in the Factory in 1895. The porcelain plate, on which the artist depicts the Mehmet Emin Ağa Fountain, in the Topkapı Palace Museum Porcelain Collection today, demonstrates that he used photograph-models, as he painted on canvas201 (fig. 42).
The painting-production integration here is also quite evident in the writings of military painters. For example, in his article for Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti Gazetesi, (the Newspaper of Ottoman Society of Painters) Hoca Ali Rıza stressed:
196 How art, knowledge, and commerce were associated with each other is also discussed in Yalçınkaya’s book: Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of the 1860s and 1870s was the increasing emphasis on the links between the new knowledge and arts and commerce, rather than civil service. Hence, the reason behind the decline of Ottoman industries, before anything else, was the lack of scientific knowledge. Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots, 138.
197 Suna Canan Aydın Altay, “Yıldız Çini Fabrika-ı Hümayunu Art Nouveau Eserler,” (Master’s Thesis, Hacettepe Üniversitesi, 2015), 76. Also, for the collection, Hülya Kalyoncu, “Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Yıldız Porselenleri Koleksiyonu'nun Değerlendirilmesi,” (PhD. Diss., Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi, 2011).
198 Suna Canan Aydın Altay, “Yıldız Çini Fabrika-ı Hümayunu Art Nouveau Eserler,” 77.
199 Ibid., 82-5.
200 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 123.
201 Ibid., 125.
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The art of painting, which is very important in the eyes of civilized nations because of providing benefits, is a clear and fluent language and a kind of writing that is a means for the imagination and for all peoples to read and understand. Painting is an inseparable part of civilization, an absolute guide to its spread and development. Painting serves to increase and enlighten the good taste of humanity, which is one of the good habits of humanity, and to develop the sense of vision. In a market where various fabrics are sold, the accuracy in selecting the ones to be chosen is appreciated by the people of good tastes. As civilization progresses, the need for painting increases. Because the place of the first arrangement of today's works is imagination, the interpreter of imagination is writing and its complement, painting. All of the artifacts and beauties we see with amazement today came about with the guidance of the painting and the abundance it spreads. Painting is the guide and servant of savings and economics. Because if an assistant architect does not know painting or rather has no vision and imagination cannot arrange the maps and pictures in a beautiful, pleasant, durable, solid, and soul-pleasing way, and causes wastage and destruction in everything necessary for the construction. Even a tailor who does not know painting is the same. In civilized countries, tailors' snippers who have studied painting and anatomy are preferred.… In the world of civilization, for an educated person who does not have a relationship with painting, it is said that he does not know how to write.202
202 Menafi-i adiyeyi temin etmekte olması cihetiyle milel-i mütemeddine indinde pek büyük bir ehemmiyeti haiz olan sanat-ı bedia-yı resim, kuvve-i muhayyilenin meydana konmasına ve bilcümle akvamın okuyup anlayabilmesine vasıta olan açık ve selis bir lisan-ı umumi ve bir nevi yazıdır…. Resim, medeniyetin lazım-ı gayr-ı müfarıkı ve tevessü ve tekamülüne hadim bir rehber-i mutlakıdır. … Resim, beşeriyetin hasailinden olan zevk-i selimin tenmiye ve tenevvürüne ve görmek hassasının tekamülüne hadimdir. Çünkü mütenevvi kumaşlar teşhir olunan bir pazarda, intihap edilecek kumaşların emr-i intihabındaki isabet, bilcümle zevk-i Selim ashabının takdirine mazhar olacağında şüphe olmaz. Medeniyet terakki ettikçe resme ihtiyaç o nispette artar. Zira bugünkkü asar-ı medeniyyenin ilk mahall-i tertib ve ibdaı kuvve-i muhayyile ve kuvve-i muhayyilenin tercümanı ise yazı ve onun mütemmimi olan resimdir. Bugün nazar-ı hayretimiz önünde duran bunca asar ve bedayi-i medeniyyenin cümlesi resmin delalet ve asar-ı feyz-nisarı ile husul bulmuştur.
Resim, tasarruf ve iktisadın rehber ve hadimidir. Çünkü resim bilmeyen ve daha doğrusu rüyet ve muhayyilesi tekemmül etmemiş olan bir bina kalfası, yapacağı harita ve resimleri güzel, dilnişin, metin ve mukavvim ve ruhnevaz bir surette tanzim edemeyeceğinden levazımat-ı inşaiyede israf ve istihlakı mucip olmuş olur. Mesela yine resim bilmeyen bir terzi dahi böyledir. Hatta memalik-i mütemeddinede terzilerin mikrazdarlarının resim ve onun levazımından olan teşrih-i insani dersini görmüşleri tercih edilmektedir. … Mektep görmüş bir zatın bir miktar olsun resme münasebet peyda etmemesi Alem-i temeddünde yazı yazmak bilmiyor, denilecek kadar bir nakısa addolunur.
Kaymakam A. Rıza, “Resme Dair,” Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti Gazetesi, no.7, (1911), 51.
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This article of Hoca Ali Rıza makes two important points the subject of discussion. Firstly, as a painter, he tries to make modern art a part of his culture on a legitimate basis by emphasizing the importance of painting, and art in general for social progress in the eyes of society. Secondly, Ali Rıza, who already received an education that functionalized painting, has formed his views on art on this ground. He developed his opinions on art in the multi-layered environment of Istanbul. After retiring in 1911, he devoted himself entirely to the painting education of students and had much more time for painting. Moreover, Sanayi-i Nefise, Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti (after taking a stance against the academy), and ever-developing art environment in Pera should have contributed his opinions. However, the education he received at Harbiye seems to have always existed within the instrumentality that Ali Rıza attributed to painting. For this reason, behind the examples he put forward while trying to show the benefit of the painting, there is not an artificiality for, but a ground of legitimacy brought by his educational background.
Fig. 42 Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, The Fountain of Mehmed Emin Ağa, 1896, The Topkapı Palace Porcelain Collection, 34/352, Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 337.
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Hüseyin Zekâi's writings are also essential at this point. He put forward ideas on the same ground as Hoca Ali Rıza and even starts his article by quoting Ali Rıza's one referred above. Even this move shows that Hüseyin Zekâi agrees with Ali Rıza and that Ali Rıza's opinions constitute a starting point for his article. Hüseyin Zekâi expresses:
Some of our branches of industry have not been able to rise like the works of art of developed nations and have not been able to get rid of primitiveness for all these centuries is also due to the lack of painting.… The fact that the Göksu and Çanakkale jugs cannot take on a soul-pleasing shape with their flatness is also a sad result of our unpopularity with the technique above. Although Göksu and Çanakkale ceramics, which are in demand to some extent from Europeans, are sent to civilized countries that buy them in large quantities, we think that the reason for this popularity is not the artistic beauty of the works. Maybe it is proof to show to the world how limited ceramics and porcelain business in Turkey have been and could not even go one step further.… the fault is only with us. We said that the time has come for art to reach development by applying the methods of painting to these arts, and that the understanding that I produce what I saw from my father should be abandoned from now on and that it is necessary to apply the methods valid in all kinds of production according to the perfection of our time, but they hesitated to accept it?203
203 Sanayiimizden bazılarının milel-i müterakkiyye asar-ı sanatı misillü mazhar-ı teali olamayub bunca asırlardan berü hal-i ibtidailikden bir dürlü yakasını kurtaramamış olması da yine resimsizlik yüzündendir.
Göksu ve Çanakkale destilerinin besatetiyle ruh-nevaz bir şekle tabi olamamaları yine fenn-i mezbura rağbetsizliğimizin netayic-i müellimesindendir ki….
Gerçi Avrupalılarca dahi bir dereceye kadar mazhar-ı rağbet olmakda bulunan Göksu ve Çanakkale mamulat-ı türabiyyesi oldukca külli mikdarda mübayaa olunarak bilad-ı mütemeddineye irsal kılınmakda ise de bize kalırsa iş bu rağbet bunların sanatca olan nefasetine değil belki Türkiye’de mamulat-ı türabiye ve porsilenciliğin ne ayarda bir şekl-i mahdudiyet dairesinde kalmış ve hatta bir hatvecik bile
olsun ileri gidememiş olduğunu aleme göstermek için bir numune-i isbat makamında vukua gelmektedir.
… bu babda yalnız kusur bizdedir. Zira bu sanatlara da usul-i tersimin tatbikiyle sanatın bir meydan-ı terakkiye vasıl olmak zemanının artık hulül eylemiş ve hatta çokdan geçmiş olduğunu ve babamdan ne gördüm ise onu imal ederim desturunun bundan böyle terk edilerek asr-ı hazırın kemaline göre her nev imalatda esaslı ve …(¿) usullere müracaat edilmek lazım geleceğini sanatın amillerine bildirdik de onlar kabulden imtina mı ettiler. Şakirdana ehemmiyetli bir suretde anı tahsil ettirmek ve fennin gayesini etrafıyla anlatmak ve bu ilmin cihan-ı terakkiyede nasıl bir mevki-i mutena ihraz eylemiş olduğunu tamamıyla ve asarıyla anlara bildirmek ve imtihanlarda fünun-ı saire-i aliyye misillü resim fennine dahi ehemmiyet virilmek lazımdır. Hüseyin Zekai, Mübeccel Hazineler, 150-153.
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These words of Hüseyin Zekâi express the integration effort in Yıldız Factory. His harsh criticism of ceramics made with traditional methods is an effort to apply the modern rather than the criticism of the old. Hüseyin Zekâi, who believes that the painting and design techniques of modern painting will contribute greatly to industrial production and trade, draws attention to the role of painting in the Ottoman modernization process. It is not surprising to read these views from Hüseyin Zekâi, a classmate with Ali Rıza and went through the same education process. The role that Harbiye attributes to technique and functionality continues in the views of its graduates.
Of course, these views did not belong only to military painters. There are opinions supported by almost the same examples in the articles written about thirty-five years ago. Referring to these articles shows that apart from the graduates who spread these views in positions, a group of intellectuals also gave the same emphasis to modern painting in the modernization process. For example, an article by an anonymous author entitled Sanat (art), published in the newspaper Basiret in January 1876 draws attention to the necessary harmony between art and commerce for the nation’s progress. The author underlines the wrongness of waiting for the end of the world by painting the edge of the chair with methods learned from fathers, embroidering the towels, and making pitchfork-like products.204 Next month, another article titled Resim (painting) was written by again an anonymous author in February 1876. Fine arts were shown as the only reason why Europe has come to an advanced point in the industry, trade, education; and painting was emphasized as the pioneer of fine arts. This situation was exemplified by the emergence of industrial products and architectural monuments developed under the leadership of painting in Europe. At the same time, it is stated that the new painting techniques, especially the printing technique, make it easier to reproduce the product, and the factories benefit greatly from this situation. For example, a European fabric manufacturer learns through the pictures of travelers that the Anatolian people likes the red bindallı (a kind of dress). The merchant, who uses his intelligence, produces thousands of meters and sends them to Anatolia and earns millions of coins in return. In the article, painting is a branch of art with a visual taste and meaning, also deals with its intricate situation with science. This situation is exemplified by cartography, which is considered within the scope of the
204 Halil Özyiğit, “1830-1920 Yılları Arasında Süreli Yayınlarda Türk Resim Sanatı Eleştirisi,” (PhD. Diss. Ankara Üniversitesi, 2012), 101-102.
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picture. The contribution of cartography based on painting knowledge in determining the borders and locations of states was emphasized (fig. 43-44, these two demonstrate the advanced level of the forthcoming painters of the time in map construction, especially Mustafa Vasfi’s map seems like a painting of the Golden Horn). In addition, the contributions of painting to zoology, botany, agriculture, and medical science in our country and Europe were briefly emphasized. As a result, with the art schools to be opened, art will be loved in our country and will contribute to the advancement of the scientific world, especially in the hands of the young generation.205
The unity of science, technique, industry, and art emphasized in the articles once again shows the functional role of knowledge in Ottoman modernization. The examples given by two military painters in two separate articles years later, and the continuity of the understanding also says a lot about the context. In this context, painting was tried to be a part of knowledge production and application by playing its role. Especially Harbiye has been one of the most influential shapers of the context. It is possible to say that the younger generations, which the author mentioned in the previous article, maintain this understanding both in practice and in theory. Hoca Ali Rıza, who was eighteen at the time the article was published, and Hüseyin Zekâi, who was sixteen years old, tried to make modern painting techniques one of the most important parts of knowledge production during their years of work. They rarely expressed their ideas in their articles. This attitude, which is not unique to them, can be observed in the works of the students who the military officers trained at Darüşşafaka High School and other civilian schools, and in their own homes.
205Halil Özyiğit, “1830-1920 Yılları Arasında Süreli Yayınlarda Türk Resim Sanatı Eleştirisi,” 100-101.
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Fig. 43 Mustafa Vasfi Paşa, Map of Golden Horn and its Surroundings, 47,5-31,7cm, Salt Archive. APLMVP001, https://archives.saltresearch.org/handle/123456789/109969.
Fig. 44 Hoca Ali Rıza, Anatolia Map, 69x102 cm, İ.B.B. Atatürk Kitaplığı. 912.561 ALİ 1321 H.k.1.
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CHAPTER III
ICONOPHOBIA IN ISLAM AND FIGURATIVE PAINTING
Military painters did not have any hesitations about depicting human figures because the debates on the prohibition developed in favor of the figurative depiction. Therefore, figurative painting was a matter of preference, not a drawback. Moreover, as discussed in the previous chapter, landscape and still-life paintings were more functional in knowledge production than portraits or figurative compositions. However, the absence of figures in paintings always tried to be explained in the context of Islamic prohibition or seen as the inaptitude of painters and the effect of non-academic education.206 Through the discussion on aniconism in the nineteenth century, I want to demonstrate that there was a suitable intellectual milieu and a legitimate ground for figurative painting, and Harbiye graduates played a significant role in the formation of this legitimacy in the eyes of people and intellectuals. Then, it will be more obvious that landscape and still-life paintings were preferred by military painters because of their functionality, the obsession with them was not a result of an aniconic hesitation.
The realistic approach developed in Harbiye led students to reflect mimesis of vision and encouraged them to develop a gaze imitating the sensible truth in nature. The human figure was not a part of painting classes. However, military painters approached it in the same attitude. The less-known part of this story is the integration of figural paintings into Ottoman traditional codes. The second half of the nineteenth century was the age of controversies about figures in the painting.207 This debate began at the beginning of the century with the tasvir-i hümayun (imperial portrait) of Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839). The sultan’s order to hang them on the walls of governmental offices was
206 Adolphe Thalasso, Ottoman Art: The Painters of Turkey (İstanbul : İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür A.Ş. , 2008), 27. Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 95. İpek Duben, Türk Resmi ve Eleştirisi, 36. Sema Olcay, Asker Ressamlar (İzmir: Arkas Sanat Merkezi, 2013), 34.
207 For comprehensive discussion in Islam and the previous centuries of the Ottoman Empire, see Wendy M.K. Shaw, What is Islamic Art? Between Religion and Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Mazhar Sevket İpşiroğlu, İslamda Resim Yasağı ve Sonuçları (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2009). Nusret Çam, İslam’da Sanat, Sanatta İslam (İstanbul: Akçağ Yayınları, 2012). Osman Şekerci, İslam'da Resim ve Heykelin Yeri (İstanbul: Çanakkale Seramik Fabrikalari, 1974). Jamal J. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion: Religios Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2012). Soner Duman, and Süleyman Kaya, “Osmanlı Dönemi Fıkıh Eserlerinde Tasvir,”.
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cursed by people and a remarkable group of bureaucrats.208 However, his insistence resulted in the consolidation of modern imperial portraiture, and this continued until the end of the Empire. Beyond the imperial orders, the popularization of figurative paintings raised hand in hand with rising controversy among intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century.209 For example, MacFarlane gives crucial information about the limitations caused by a group of ulema’s attitude towards painting class at Harbiye in the 1850s. In these sentences, it is possible to see the conditions surrounding the school, and the approach to aniconism:
…The pupils were allowed to draw nothing from the round or the real, the Ulema having decided that the faithful must not draw from objects which cast shadows. The youths must thus remain mere mechanical copyists. Monsieur G., the drawing master, did, however, entertain some hopes of being allowed to teach them to sketch landscapes after nature. But, surely, of all men in the world the lounging keff-making Ulema will be the first to tell him that trees do verily cast shadows; nor should I be astonished if they discovered that shades are projected by mountains, rocks, and buildings.210
This attitude continued during and after the century in a group’s mindset. In his book Reddü’l-Muhtar, written in the early nineteenth century and published in Istanbul 1874/5, the prominent alfaqui İbn Abidin (1784-1836)211 answered many questions about this issue. According to him, it is illicit and prohibited to depict zi-rûh (being with soul, i.e., animals and human being).212 Even he says that if a person demolishes the wall with
208 Halil Edhem, Elvah-ı Nakşiye Koleksiyonu, 10. As will be discussed, this group was not the only side: Görseler Bihzâd ü Mâni öyle tasviri eğer / Hüsn-i resmine olurdı ikisi birden güvah (If Bihzad and Mani could seen this portrait / They would witnessed the beauty of the painting)
Ziver Paşa, Asar-ı Ziver Paşa: Divan ve Münşeat (Brusa: Matbaa-i Vilayet, 1894), 49-50.
209 For more information, see Günsel Renda, "Tasvir-i Hümayun 1800-1922," in Padişahın Portresi Tesavir-i Al-i Osman, edited by Selmin Kangal et al., 441-542. (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2000).
210 Charles Mac Farlane, Turkey and its Destiny, 1850. 173-174.
211 İbn Abidin (1784-1836) was the authority of the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) of the Hanafi school of law. He wrote and compiled more than fifty works consisting of a major fatwa (legal statement) collection, many poems, and şerh (commentary) on others’ works. His most famous work, Reddü’l-Muhtar 'ala e’d-dürru’l-Muhtar is still an authoritative text of Hanafi fiqh, as one of the most comprehensive, encyclopedic compilations of the Hanafi school. Ahmet Özel, “ Muhammed Emin İbn Abidin,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 19, (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi), 292-3.
212 For a detailed comparison, see Soner Duman, and Süleyman Kaya, “Osmanlı Dönemi Fıkıh Eserlerinde Tasvir,” 108.
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a painted depiction belonging to someone else, he will not pay for the depiction other than the value of the wall and paint.213
Another member of ulema, Ahmed Şirani (1879-1942)214 harshly criticized the modern attitude towards the figurative painting of his time and advised especially younger generations. In a late date, in 1919, a student at Bursa High School wrote to İtisam journal to ask whether Islam allows figurative depiction or not215. The student had two concerns in the writing; whether their lectures on drawing and painting are lawful; and if modern art is unlawful, whether they must confess that Islam inhibits progress. In his answer, Ahmed Şirani took his position very clearly. He began with the relationship between morality and art, then executes through hadiths that figures are not allowed in Islam, lastly, addresses how figures are dangerous for the Ottoman society:
There is no doubt that pictures and images stimulate prostitution and adultery between women and men; and naked men and women pictures corrupt the moral. In this regard, I am sure that virtuous people will protect Islamic Sharia because of the banning of painting and reproducing a painting. Since a faithless and immoral nation cannot reach benefit and truth in civilization, Islamic law does not prevent the development of civilization by prohibiting the production of images but eliminates the obstacles.
We cannot understand that it has prevented fine arts. I wonder what kind of fine art which Islam is preventing. We cannot count immoral paintings as fine arts. Only some painted plates, landscapes, and paintings come to our mind. However, the picture and the image have many damages for this little benefit. In fact, the depiction that sharia prohibits is the picture and image of only animals from three disciplines (mevalid-i selase: botanics, zoology, mining). Except for the animals ... everyone is allowed to paint all kinds of plants and minerals, and
213 Soner Duman, and Süleyman Kaya, “Osmanlı Dönemi Fıkıh Eserlerinde Tasvir,” 110.
214Ahmed Şirani (1879-1942) was an ulema. He began to teach at the Fatih Mosque in 1912/3. Next year, he graduated from Medresetü’l-Kuzat and served at several institutions; was the clerk at Darü’l-Hikmet-i İslamiye (the House of Islmic Wisdom), and he became the director of Darü’l-Hikmet-i İslamiye’s journal Ceride-i İlmiye next year. Şirani also published three magazines titled Medrese İtikatları, Hayrü’l-Kelam and İ’tisam. Selahattin Tozlu, “İkinci Meşrutiyet Döneminde Bir İlmiyeli Ahmed Şirani Efendi,” Türkiye Günlüğü , 42-59, 1997.
215M. Naci, “Resim ve Suret Hakkında Sual ve İstizah,” İtisam, no. 17 (1919): 718-720.
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geometric shapes… Pictures and images cannot be the property of a Muslim like wine and raki.216
In parallel to Ahmed Şirani’s strong opposition, in Misbahü’l-Münir fi Meni’t-Tasvir (Enlightening People about the Prohibition of Depiction), Hacı Salih argued that pictures were a medium for worldly pleasures, moral corruption, and being like infidels:
In our time, the purposes of those who give their pictures as gifts to each other by exalting them, and who announce the pictures of the souvenirs and celebrities, are nothing more than to show love to each other, to reveal their love in accordance with the inspiration from the verses. However, when one considers deeply what their purpose is, it becomes obvious that this is a worldly pleasure ... Since the presence of images that cause appetizing looks will lead to various drawbacks and harming religion, denying these images is one of the first known prohibitions.217 More, they will be destroyed in eternal disappointment, who see images as a means of friendship and establishing a beautiful relationship, by having them on their chests like an enam-ı şerif (book of suras), decorating their homes, which is a reflection of the hearts, with that display of humiliation.218
216 Resim ve suretin kadınlar ile erkekler arasında nasıl bir vesile-i fuhş ve zina, vasıta-i tearif ve tecazib olduğunu, bir arada olarak çıkarılan çırılçıplak erkek ve kadın resimlerinin genç kız ve erkeklerin ahlakını ne derecede ifsad ettiğini nazar-ı eman ve insafa alan fezail-i insaniyye ve ahlakiyye tarafdarlarının şeriat-i islamiyyeyi - resim ve suret, imal ve istimalini nehy ve tahrim buyurduğundan dolayı – bütün aza ve civar hiyle takdis edeceğinde şübhemiz yokdur. Akidesiz ve ahlaksız bir kavmin medeniyet-i nafia ve hakikiyye ile alakası olamayacağı cihetle, şeriat-ı islamiyye, resim ve suret, imal ve istimalini nehy ve tahrim buyurmakla; terakkiyat-ı medeniyyeye maniler ihdas etmiş değil, manlier ortadan kaldırmış olur.Sanayi-i nefiseye mani olduğunu anlayamıyoruz. Acaba ne gibi sanayi-i nefiseye mani oluyor? Ahlaksızlığa aid resimleri sanayi-i nefiseden addemeyiz. Yalnız bazı resimli levhalar, manzaralar, tablolar hatıra geliyor. Fakat resim ve suretin bu pek cüzi menfaatine mukabil pek çok mazarratları görülmektedir. Esas memnuiyet-i şeriyye, mevalid-i selaseden yalnız hayvanata mahsus olan resim ve suretdir. Hayvanatın haricinde ... her nevi nebatat ve maadin ve hendesevi eşkale aid her nevi resimleri imal ve istimale herkes mezundur. ... Resim ve suretler de şarab ve rakı gibi bir müslümanın mal ve mülkü olamaz. Ahmed Şirani, “Resim ve Suret Hakkındaki Suale Cevab,” İtisam, no.53 (1919): 625-8.
217 Zamanımızda kemal-i tazimat ile resimlerini yekdiğere takdim ve ihda eyleyen yadigarların ve meşahirin resimlerini ilan etmekden maksadları mukteza-yı müfazîn-i ayat birbirilerine arz-ı müveddet ve izhar-ı muhabbet ve vesail-i cemiyetden başka şey değildir. Ancak müveddet-i mezbureden aksa-yı meramları neden ibaret bulunduğu cay-ı teemmüldür hele istihsal-i lezaiz-i dünya olduğu aşikar……………. Nazar iştiha-perver suretlerin bulunmasından vech-i mezkur üzere tevlid ettirmiş bulunduğu mazarrat-ı diniyyeden gayri daha nice envaı mahzuratın vukuı gayr-ı hafi bulunduğundan bu cihetle de suretin inkarı malum-ı ula-yı ilahidir. Hacı Salih, Misbahü’l-Münir fi Meni’t-Tasvir (Dersaadet: Manzume-i Efkâr Matbaası, 1912), 11-12.
218 Ve bundan fazla bir de suver-i küfriyyelerini vesile-i ülfet ve medar-ı hüsn -i muaşeret ittihaz eyleyüb enam-ı şerif misali koyunlarında ve sandıklarında gezdirmek ve numune-i kalb-i beşer olan hane
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Since these abominations’ primary intention and deeds, who shows love by presenting their images and pictures to each other, are to worship the image, it is clear that those who make images will also be resurrected and treated together with the image worshipers.219
A couple of years later, Abdurrahman Lütfullah, a lieutenant of reserve forces and graduate of the literature department at Darü’l-Fünun (House of Sciences/Ottoman university) emphasized that human beings have almost become a worshiper of matter. There is always possibility of falling into polytheism in this time. He argued in a booklet that he wrote as a response to “modernist” ideas about the interpretation of religion, polygamy, painting, sculpture, and the rights of slaves, expressed by one of the most famous poets of the time and a medical doctor, Cenab Şahabeddin (d.1934):
As we do today, the sculptures and paintings they use as souvenirs and ornaments did not turn themselves off the road. Still, as a result of the disaster they suffered, the generation, who took a different shape, did not know the Creator deeply, and everything they benefited from came within their ranges with sculptures and paintings that they found as examples. This has given birth to blasphemy, which is the root of all evil and has covered the truth.
As a result of the developments, the truth has been understood; they say there is nothing to worship painting and sculpture, but the development of the mind makes us worship other things. If something is offered to a person, it is mentioned about membership in monthly or daily money. This person says that the question asked is not to be fed with air; money and affiliation are required to live. According to this statement, power is expected from money and affiliation. In that case, it is thought that the benefit comes from matter, and servitude to matter.220
ve me’valarını ol suret-i mezellet ve rehin ile tezyin ve ihtiram etmek …. tasrihatı vechle hüsran-ı ebedide kalmak ve canib-i helake şitaban olmakdır. Hacı Salih, Misbahü’l-Münir fi Meni’t-Tasvir, 16.
219 Binaenaleyh suret ve resimlerini biribirine takdim ederek müveddet gösteren gürih-i gavayet-i mekruhun siret ve amellerinin başlıcası suretperestlik olduğundan suret istimal edenlerin dahi suret-perestler ile haşr ve muamele edileceği zahir ve nümayan olur. Hacı Salih, Misbahü’l-Münir fi Meni’t-Tasvir, 18.
220 Bu hiss-i abudiyetin şükranı, halik olan zat-ı vacibü’l-vücudu yakinen bildikleri zaman mahalline masruf olduğundan [bizim de bugün hatıra olarak yaptığımız gibi] sebeb-i intifa’ın timsali olarak beray-ı hatır ve ve tezyin yaptıkları heyakil ve ersam kendilerini şaşırtmamış ise de isyan neticesi maruz kaldıkları felaketle tebeddül iden neslin zat-ı bariyi yakinen bilmemeleri ve halbuki intifa’ itdikleri her şeyin timsal
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Here, the last sheik al-Islam Dürrizade Abdullah Beyefendi (1869-1923)221’s fatwah finds its context:
Is it illicit according to the Sharia for a Muslim Zayd to depict humans and other living animals in any situation? Answer: It is. Would it be makruh close to haram to keep the aforementioned images at home or in other places? Answer: It is.222
The important points to be emphasized here are the content of the images and how they are perceived. Rather than the use of perspective or depicting figures, these authors criticized the poses of the figures, their sexes, and the recipient's use of these pictures in the way Europeans use them. Although all the writings point to the prohibition by interpreting the hadiths, their concern is not whether to draw a figure or not. However, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, opposite voices arose in booklets and article series in popular journals and newspapers.
In this turmoil, a group of concerned intellectuals actively participated in discussions about the direction of transformation. Mustafa Sabri Efendi (1869-1954)223, a deputy and future sheik al-Islam, published three articles titled Din-i İslam’da Hedef-i Münakaşa Olan Mesailden Suret (Images as One of the Disputed Topics in Islam). In
olarak buldukları bu heyakil ve ersamı ile menziline sokdurmuş ve bu suretle şirk şeklini alarak bütün fenalığa aslolan küfranı doğurmuş ve hakikati setretmiştir. Terakkiyata nazaran hakikat anlaşılmışdır, resim ve heykele tapacak yokdur diyenlere bugünkü terakkiyat-ı heva-yı akliyyenin şükranı bizi başka şeylere teabüd (?) ettirmekde bulunduğunu gösteririz. Şöyle ki: Bir zata bir şey teklif olunsa aylık, yevmiye ve mensubiyetten bahs olunuyor. Vaki olan suale heva ile beslenecek değilim a yaşamak için para ve mensubiyet lazımdır deniyor. Şu ifadeye nazaran kuvvet, paradan ve mensubiyetten bekleniyor. O halde intifa maddeden zan ile şükran maddeye matuf olunuyor ve teabüd ediliyor. El-hac Abdurrahman Lütfullah, Cevâb (İstanbul: Necm-i İstikbal Matbaası, 1921), 15.
221 Dürrizade Abdullah Efendi (1869-1923) was the last sheik al-Islam of the empire. He advanced quickly in his career, served at several commissions and institutions both as a member of ulema and a civilian bureaucrat. Because of this duality, he used sometimes “Efendi” and sometimes “Bey” as his appellation. He acted for Damad Ferid Paşa as the grand vizier when he went to Paris for the treaty in 1920. For more information, Mehmet İpşirli, “Dürrizade Abdullah Beyefendi,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol.10, (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi), 36.
222 Zeyd-i müslimin insan ve sair zi-ruh olan hayvan suretlerini alâ külli hal tasviri şer’an haram olur mu? El-Cevab: Olur. Bu surette suver-i mezkurenin hane ve sair mevazıda ittihazı tahrimen mekruh olur mu? El-Cevab: Olur. Soner Duman, and Süleyman Kaya, “Osmanlı Dönemi Fıkıh Eserlerinde Tasvir,” 113.
223 Mustafa Sabri Efendi (1869-1954) was a shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Empire. He served as hafiz-i kütüb (librarian) of Sultan Abdülhamid II, and as Tokat representative in the Ottoman parliament. From 1908 to 1912, he published the journal Beyanü’l-Hakk (the Expression of Truth). In 1919, he became shaykh al-Islam in the Damad Ferid Paşa’s cabinet. He wrote against nationalism, secularism and Islamic reformism. For a detailed account of his ideas, İbrahim Bayram, Şeyhülislam Mustafa Sabri Efendi’nin Dini Düşüncesi, (İstanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2019).
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these articles, he explained details of the prohibition of figurative depiction in Islam through hadiths. Sabri Efendi discusses controversial hadiths used as the reason for the belief. 224 However, he points out that people are not at the same level of mind and understanding, and still cannot give up some superstitions. What is forbidden is not only idolatry, but also the possibility of idolatry, and this possibility still exists today. He also says that the reason for the judgment is not just a specific thing, so eliminating the possibility of idolatry cannot eliminate the prohibition of depiction.225 In the end, he suggested moderation for artists and receivers by expressing his concerns about the use of images in Ottoman society:
Let us say that the images are allowed on the coins, or when the figures whose details are less than recognizable, or some parts of the bodies are missing, or having not whole-body parts that are enough to live. In this regard, taking photographs of the upper part of the body should be lawful; if you cut off the lower part of the body, there is no chance to live. The work started with half a photo becomes a whole body after a while. Would it come to mind that painting and photography, which started as fine art, would fall to such a degree as the means of displaying nude women paintings in the marketplace? Therefore, I am following the sharia interpretation about this half photograph issue with great fear in me. More precisely, prudent people in the psychology of our time do not even dare to show their half photos today. 226
224 These hadiths were the well-known samples; “On the Day of Judgment, those who will be subjected to the most severe torment are musavvir.” “Musavvir will be called to breathe life into their images but they will fail to do.” “The place of all those who make images is Hell.” “Those who will suffer the most severe torment in the Day of Judgment are those who imitate the creator power of Allah.” “Angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog or an image.” Mustafa Sabri, “Din-i İslam’da Hedef-i Münakaşa Olan Mesailden Suret,” Beyanü’l-Hakk 1, no. 19 (1908): 426-7.
225 For a comparison and discussion, see Soner Duman, and Süleyman Kaya, “Osmanlı Dönemi Fıkıh Eserlerinde Tasvir,” 108.
226 Şurasını söyleyelim ki meskukat üzerinde bulunan tefasil-i azası seçilemeyecek derecede küçük olan suretlerle azasından bazısı nakıs ama sureti hakikat farz edince o noksan ile yaşaması kabil olmayacak derecede nakıs olan suretler mefudur. Bu tafsile nazaran belden yukarı alınan fotoğrafların caiz olması lazım geliyor. Çünkü belinden aşağısı kesilen insanın yaşaması kabil değildir. Yarım fotoğrafla başlanan iş biraz sonra bütünleşir. Bu sanat-ı nefise şekl ve namıyla başlayan ressamlığın fotoğrafcılığın çarşıda pazarda çıplak kadın resimleri teşhirine vasıta olmak gibi bir derece-i şenaate tenzil edeceği hatıra gelir miydi. Anın için şu yarım fotoğraf meselesindeki mesağ-ı şeriyyeyi bendeniz de içinde büyük bir havf ve ihtiraz ile vaz ü enzar ediyorum. Daha doğrusu zaman-ı hazıramızın ahval-i ruhiyyesini temil eden erbab-ı basiret bence bugün şu mesadan bilistifade yarım fotoğraflarını teşhire cesaret edemezler. Mustafa Sabri, “Din-i İslam’da Hedef-i Münakaşa..,” 428.
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Sabri Efendi justifies taking photographs and owning/keeping images in the context of Sharia. His interpretations of photography can be employed to comment on painting in terms of figures. Like photography, he would also allow half-portrait paintings. In this regard, Mustafa Sabri becomes a representative of the in-between position. He argues that depicting and possessing are different from each other. It is permissible to have if the possessor keeps the image below his waist, and the image is small, uncertain, or lacks some parts that make it unable to live. It should not be discussed without knowing its permissible aspects, according to Sharia.227 Of course, “modernists” were aware of these groups and its effect on ordinary people. Hence, they tried to place realist figures on the legitimate ground, eliminate “iconoclast” arguments and disseminate novelty.
In 1870, Ali Suavi (1839-1878)228, a thinker educated in madrasa, answered a question asked to him in his newspaper, Ulûm. This question was whether painted or sculpted art is legitimate in Islam. His answer justified concurrent art of his century by historicizing figurative works in the Islamic context:
In Principalities, there were figures on their coins. While there was La ilahe illallah (there is no god but God) on their coins, there were human figures on the other side. These states had many ulema members, such as regions like Jazira, Mosul, Sancar, Hama. When we came to sculpted figures, it takes place even in the time of the Abbasids. They were not to be worshipped. After commissioning ... Baghdad, Caliph Mansur commissioned a house and a mosque for himself in central Medina. Then he built an iwan with a 54-meters-long green dome and placed a sculpture of a cavalry spearman on this.229
227 Mustafa Sabri Efendi, “Din-i İslam’da Hedef-i Münakaşa..,” 427-8.
228 Ali Suavi (1839-1878) was a journalist, educator, and theologian. He began to preach at the Sehzade Mosque in Constantinople and wrote for/published Muhbir newspaper in London. He was a member of the Young Ottomans. For nine months in 1877, he was the director of Galata Sarai Lycée. Ali Suavi advocated the total reform in religion and the Ottoman governmental system. For his life and works, Aaron Scott Johnson, “A Revolutionary Young Ottoman: Ali Suavi (1839-1878),” (Ph.D. dissertation. McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies, 2012).
229 İslamdan atabegan devletlerinde atabeylerin sikkelerinde suretler var idi. Bu sikkeler üzerinde ‘‘La ilahe illallah Muhammeden resulullah” yazılı olduğu halde insan resimleri dahi madrub idi. Bu devletler İslam’dan ve Atabegan ekserisi ulemadan oldukları halde hususan Cizre, ve Musul ve Sancar ve Hama gibi uleması çok mevakımda ve beş yüz sularında böyle suretli sikkeler darb ederlerdi. Mücessem suret yapmağa gelince Hulefa-yı Abbasiyye vaktinde bile vakidir. Bu suretler ismi gibi mesere(?) olub tapınmak için olmadığı cümlenin malumudur… Mansur Halife ata?-yı Bağdadı bina ettiği vakit birinci tuğlayı kendi eliyle koydu. Ve kendi hane ve camiini vusta-I Medine’de yaptırdı. Ve orada bir eyvan bina etti ki kubbesinin irtifaı 80 ziraa idi. Bu kubbe yeşil olup ortasında bir mızraklı süvari timsali var idi. Ali Suavi,
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These sentences written by Ali Suavi were the first remarkable attempts to legitimize realist and figurative paintings in the Ottoman Empire. Rather than focusing on verses or hadiths, he directly brought the practical side of this issue into the history of Islamic states and tried to establish links between historical and contemporary practices. What is obvious in his writing, Ali Suavi suggests that producing and owning figures cannot be unlawful as long as it is not worshipped. If it was unlawful, previous caliphs and Islamic states would not produce, own, or use them. Vakanüvis (Chronicler) Lütfi Efendi (1816-1907) also tried to clarify Sultan Mahmud II’s aim in order of hanging his portrait on the walls:
In order to understand and examine former times using perception and judgement, it is wise to gather knowledge and its representation. It is wise to respect old works. This foundation enables the representational paintings of image-makers like Mani and Bihzad, which constitute the beginnings of works of art, to be respected and remembered. Some people’s pictures are made and remembered for the purpose of bearing the name and receiving meaning from the image. Representations are a great benefit for history. As was the case with Sultan Mehmed II, prescribed symbols must obey the rules of wisdom for the preservation of the glory of a renovated state, and in the absence of this intention, God forbid would enable the elevation to worship and the making of idols. This higher wisdom was established when Mehmed the Conqueror ordered that the images of angels within Hagia Sophia were retained.230
However, in our time, such religious rules have strengthened their place in people's hearts. There has been some slackening even in implementing laws that would require another interpretation among the people. The effort taken in hanging the painting of the sultan and the attention given to the it was seen as ugly by the public, which caused a lot of objections. There was even a reaction in Arabia. After Sultan Mahmud passed away, these depictions were covered. Later, the depiction technique advanced, and it became fashionable to take photographs,
“İslam’da Münakkaş ve Mücessem Suret Yapmak Vuku Bulup Bulmayacağı,” Ulum Gazetesi, no.9 (1870): 500-501.
230 Until this part, the English translation belongs to Wendy Shaw. see Wendy Shaw, Ottoman Painting, 27-8.
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but it did not attract many reactions as people did not hung it with prayer and praise.231
Lütfi Efendi’s sentences tried to appease the reader by accentuating the function of realistic images in political affairs and historiography. As a chronicler recording what he witnessed and hear, Lütfi Efendi was aware of the opposition to the sultan’s attempt. Later publications by Hacı Salih and Abdurrahman Lütfullah expressed the accumulation of objection against the widespread circulation of figurative paintings, photographs, and postcards. The 1870s was the period of rising for these works, and Lütfi Efendi tried to contextualize them on a legitimized ground by sweeping the concerns. To advocate Ali Suavi’s argument from a different point of view, which will gain supporters later, Ahmet Midhat wrote in his novel Taaffüf (1895) that Islam prohibited figurative painting and sculpture to consolidate itself in its early years. According to him, there is no need to keep this prohibition because people do not worship anything but God.
In Islam, it is strictly prohibited to attribute divinity to paintings and sculptures; and look at them through the eyes of a worshipper. It is already consolidated today the belief that is worshipping nothing but God, there is no place for more hesitation than enough to own a painting, even for a sculpture.232
231 Hâtıra Ezmine-i sâlife ahkâm u ahvâline vukuf ve ıttılâ' ile tahsîl-i maârif ve sanâyi' edilmesi içün âsâr-ı kadîmeye i'tibâr muktezâ-yı hikmetdir. Bu hikmet sırrına mebnîdir ki zâten hürmeti ma'lûm olmasıyla beraber Mani ve Bihzâd misillû musavvirîn-i eslâfın âsâr-ı sanâyi'-i bedîaları olan tesâvir-i müresseme-yi nihâde-i levha-i i'tibâr ile ihtiyâr-ı kabûl-i hürmet ahlâfın husûl -i ma'lûmâtı- na ve eslâfın beka-i nâmına bir hidmetdir. isimden müsemmâya ve resim ve tasvirden ma'nâya intikal garazıyla ba'zı zevâtın tasvirlerini ahz u hıfz eylemek tarihçe ve zabt-ı ensâbca büyük bir menfaatdir. Sultan Mahmûd Han hazretleri misillû bir müceddid-i devletin beka-i nâm ü şânı içün timsâl-i masnû- unu hıfz etmesi zikr olunan kaide-i hikemiyyeye ri'âyetdir ve niyyet bu niyyet- dir yoksa maazallahu teâlâ taabbüd ve tecessüm ma'nâsı değildir.
Bu mütâlaa-i hikemiyyeye mebnî olmak gerek ki Ebu'l-feth ve'l-megazi Fatih Sultan Mehmed Han-ı Gazi hazretleri Ayasofya içimdeki melek sûretlerini ibka buyurmuşdur. Ma'mâfih cemî'-i vakitde bu misillû ahkâm-ı ledünniyye kulûb-ı havâs ile kaim olup inde'l-avâm öyle te'vîle muhtâc olacak memnûâtın icrâsından tevakki dahi ayn-ı hikmet olduğu âzâde-i kayd-i tersim ve işâretdir. Tasvîr-i pâdişâhînin sûret-i irsâl ve ta'lîkinde icrâ olunan tekellüfât-ı resmiyye ve inşâd kılınan medîha-i tasvîriyyeden derecât-ı te'vîliyyeyi tecâvüzü halkça çirkin görünerek ol vakit epeyce i'tirâzâtı mucîb olduğu misillû Arabistan taraflarında dahi sû'-i te'sîri görülmüşdür. Sultan Mahmûd Han hazretleri âzim-i gülşen-serâ-yı âhiret oldukda bu tasvirler pûşîde-i setr ü ihfâ edilmişdir. Sonraları ahz-i tasvir fenni ilerileyerek resim çıkartmak moda hükmüne girmiş, duâ ve senâ ile ta'lik olunmadığından mir'ât-ı kulûb-i sâfiyye erbâbını o derece dûçâr-ı iğbirâr etmemişdir. Hoca Münîb Efendi'nin Siyer-i Kebîr tercümesinde bu bahse dâir tafsilât vardır. Ahmed Lûtfi Efendi, Ez Tarih-i Devlet-i Aliyye-i Osmaniyye, vol. 5 (Mahmud Bey Matbaası, 1884/1885), 50-52.
232 İndel İslam, katiyyen memnu ve şediden haram olmak lazım gelen şey tesavir ve heyakil de bir mabudiyet tahayyül edip de onlara perestişgune bir nazarda bulunmak maddesidir. Ama İslam’da Cenab-ı Mabud’ı Hakiki’den maada hiçbir kimseye pereştiş edilmemek itikad-ı sahihi bir daha kat’an ve katıbeten halel-pezir olmamak üzere yerleşmiş bulunduğundan…binaenaleyh şu hakayık-ı ciddiye mukabilinde
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Both Ali Suavi and Ahmed Midhat were influential authors of the period. Their writings were most probably had an impact on people’s minds and their attitudes towards figurative paintings. The novelty in these opinions was a fresh interpretation of the Islamic perception of figures. Historicizing by linking contemporary practices to the previous samples was their predominant method. They found counterparts of modern acts in the adored history of Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs.
In addition to their historical references to justify figures or eliminate prohibitions, there was still one more path to integrate modern figural art into Islamic / traditional codes. For example, the painting instructor Kemal Bey wrote his book Vücud-ı Beşer ve Nisbetleri (Human Body and Its Proportions) in 1914. He was the pupil of Hoca Ali Rıza and began to teach painting at Mercan High School. In the book, he tried to link modern techniques to Islamic codes as:
The figure = human painting, which is a place that adorns the heart of the same beautiful space as painting, requires adherence to its measures and rules to have the appearance and presence desired by arts, beauty, and nature. It is extraordinarily necessary to know the proportions between the parts that make up the human body. The rules of proportion, which were built on a basis by virtuous masters who are the most distinguished, worthy of the most reverence and who have the highest imagination of painting in the brightest periods of the fine arts, and which can inspire an artistic purpose such as beauty, are the foundations of the science of human depiction.
Here, we will witness and learn the harmony between the parts of the human body and augment it in our paintings. Also, with these rules, we will get to know many works and understand the degree of power and genius in these plates. And we will worship the power and order of the Absolute Creator in creation again. These measures, these laws are the result of the long-lasting and tireless studies of many great masters of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the era of awakening and innovation (Renaissance era) initiated by the ideal of beauty. 233
haneler derununde tesavir-i musattaha hakkında değil a, tesavir-i mücesseme hakkında bile havf ü vesveyi lüzum-i hakikisinden ileriye götürmeğe fikr-i hakayık-şinasanda bir mana verilemez. Orhan Okay, Batı Medeniyeti Karşısında Ahmed Midhat Efendi (İstanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1991), 347.
233 (ressamlık) gibi ayn muhit-i bedi’in bir mıntıka-i dilarası olan “figür=insan resmi”, sınai’in, bedai’in tabiatın dilediği lisan-ı hal ve mevcudiyete malik olabilmek için kendine mahsus ölçülerin,
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Kemal Bey re-codifies the essence of the painting by following his teacher Hoca Ali Rıza’s approach. Ali Rıza wrote almost the same sentences in his article published in Osmanlı Ressamlar Cemiyeti Gazetesi to show how painting teaches painter to see the creation of the God in nature.234
Painter (ressam) can see the creative power of the God in the harmony of colors and shapes of a flower in his hand through contemplation and reflection. The relievement resulting from material and spiritual pleasures and exhilarate leads the painter to benefit from his life. Painting has complete effect on morality. People engaging in painting don’t waste their time, because they are to benefit from the beauty of the creation.
As seen in these sentences, Hoca Ali Rıza tried to associate Islamic codes with modern painting. He wrote on his esquisse of Üsküdar Şeyh Ali Efendi Mosque that kıllet-i kelam, kıllet-i menam, kıllet-i taam, mucib-i sıhhat-i tam (less talking, less sleeping, less eating is required to be in the best of health.) As Wendy Shaw indicated, this note underlines Hoca Ali Rıza’s modesty.235 Harbiye-graduate painters were dominantly pious Muslims. Therefore, their activities became model for their students. Ottomans transformed painting from an unlawful act to the corroborator of the faith. At this point, it is obvious that painting was not a brand-new activity for Ottoman painters. They amalgamated it with traditional/religious codes of the society. Hence, seeking the God in realist figurative paintings and exploring the divinity of creation in the perfection of proportions placed realism in a legitimate position. For what they were used and how they
kaidelerin takayyüdatına tabidir. Vücud-ı beşerin manzume-i umumiyyesini teşkil eden azası arasındaki nisbetlerin bilinmesi fevkalade elzemdir. Sanayi-i nefisenin en parlak devirlerinde, en güzide, en şayan-ı hürmet ve tersimin en ziyade ensice (?)-i hayaliyyesine vakıf olan esatize-i fazilet arasında bir esas üzerine vaz ve ictima ettirilen ve (güzellik) gibi bir gaye-i mefkure-i sanatı mülhem olan (kavanin-i tenasüb), (tasvir-i insan) fenninin esasatını masun…. Burada, vücud-ı beşeri teşkil eyleyen azanın beynindeki tenasübü göreceğiz ve bu kavaid ile düzgün bir vücud tersim edeceğiz ve yine bu kavaid ile bir çok asarı, levhaları bile bile temaşa edecek ve bu levhalardaki iktidar ve dehanın derecesini anlayacağız. Ve bu suretle hazret-i sani-i hakikinin kudret ve intizam-ı hilkatine perestiş edeceğiz. Bu ölçüler, bu malumat, pek büyük üstadların hasr-ı efkar ve sarf-ı vücud ederek Mısırlıların, Yunanlıların, Romalıların, ve hatta devr-i intibah ve teceddüd olan (Rönesans) devirlerinin dimağlarda başlattığı mefkure-i bedayi, numune-i hüsn ve tekmili ince ve yorulmaz tedkiklerile sencide ederekden meydana gelmiş birer (kanun)dur. Kemal, Vücud-i Beşer ve Nisbetleri, (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1914), 3-4.
234 (Ressam) eline almış olduğu ufak bir çiçekte göreceği elvan ve eşkalin ve beynlerinde olan aheng-i umuminin temaşa ve tefekküratı ile hilkatte olan kudret-i fatıra-i sübhaniyeyi idrak eyler ve bu sebeple maddi ve manevi hasıl olan ezvak ve inşirahın bahş edeceği inbisat ile tabiidir ki hayatından müstefid olmuş bulunacaktır. Resmin ahlak üzerine de tesir-i küllisi vardır. Resimle meşgul olanlar hilkatin güzelliklerinden müstefid olmak için ızâa-i vakit edici bisûd şeylerle meşgul olmaz. Kaymakam A. Rıza, “Resme Dair,” 51.
235 Wendy Shaw, “Hoca Ali Rıza ve İslam’da Resim,” in Hoca Ali Rıza Ev ve Şehir I, 29.
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were perceived by the people were the greatest problem for authors against figures. Kemal Bey seems to re-shape his students’ minds for giving an answer to these opinions. After long discussions on the proportions of human body, he gives several book samples from the Renaissance period: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mebhas-ı Tersim (Traité de la peinture), and Albrecht Dürer’s Mebhas-ı Aksam-ı Vücud-ı Beşer (Traite des proportions du corps humain)236. Even he put some examples from Dürer’s book to visualize proportions (fig.53-55).
Moreover, as far as it is seen from memoirs, not only painters themselves but also some sheikhs of dervish orders contributed to the consolidation of modern painting. For example, Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, who was famous for still-life and landscape paintings, had a few portraits. One of them was the portrait of İbrahim Edhem Efendi (1829-1904) (fig. 45), who was the sheik of Özbekler Tekkesi (the Lodge of Uzbeks). Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa was one the followers of İbrahim Edhem Efendi. Zekâi Paşa wanted to paint his sheik but hesitated to ask Edhem Efendi to sit for himself. Therefore, the painter stared at the sheik for a long time at their meetings and painted at home. One day the sheik realized that the painter stared at him, then asked, “Are you painting my face?” Zekâi Paşa answered, “Yes, messire, but I’m doing at home, if you let me work here, I want to complete it in this place.” Edhem Efendi let him paint at the lodge, and Zekâi Paşa finished the portrait.237
This case demonstrates that religious leaders’ attitudes also contributed to the development of realist painting. As representatives of the most significant mechanism in the society, sheiks tacitly persuaded people that non-worshipped paintings were not unlawful according to Islam. Moreover, this case again, demonstrates that Zekâi Paşa didn’t make an issue of painting portraits, even in the lodge. Figurative painting and being a religious Muslim could be together according to him. It is closely related to what Hoca Ali Rıza wrote in his article; that is, seeing the creative power of the God while painting. There is also a list of the paintings of Hüseyin Zekâî Paşa in an archival document on the Ottoman Palace Painting Collection dated 1890238. According to the document, the artist has twenty-seven paintings registered in the palace collection. Zekâî Paşa, who is mostly
236 Kemal, Vücud-i Beşer ve Nisbetleri, 39.
237 Özlem İnay Erten, Hüseyin Zekai Paşa ve Mübeccel Hazineler, 22.
238Fort he document and its analysis, see Zehra Güven Öztürk, “Ottoman Imperial Painting Collection Through a Document dating from 1890,” (Master’s Thesis, Koç Üniversitesi, 2008).
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known for his landscape and still life works, has works such as Bir kız resmi (A girl's painting), Çocukların koşup ata bakışları (Children's running and gazing at a horse), Kuyu başında köylü kızları (Peasant girls by the well), Develere binmiş Araplar (Arabs on camels). This list demonstrates that military artist's production is not only limited to landscape and still life, but they painted figures.239 In addition to Hüseyin Zekâi’s works, Tevfik Paşa, Süleyman Seyyid, Şeker Ahmed, Hoca Ali Rıza, Süvari Tevfik, and many others executed portraits -even nudes- and figurative compositions (fig. 45-52). Even as Kemal Bey did in his book, they worked on the human body proportions for accurate drawing and painting (fig. 54-55).
Even though figurative compositions and single-figure portraits were less in number, but the samples kept in museums and private collections disproves the argument that military painters hesitated to depict human figures because of the Islamic prohibition. They painted figures freely, except their commissioned works that they were expected to draw architectural plans, landscape paintings, or take photographs. Keeping in mind that they didn’t paint for art market closes another door for Islamic hesitation. Also, there is another problem here. The hadiths addressed by ulema covers not only human but also animals. Zî-rûh, as discussed above, means creature having soul, which are humans and animals. This situation demonstrates that while explaining the absence of figures in paintings, the literature on military painters disregarded one side of hadiths and limits them. If military painters hesitated to depict figures as a result of Islamic beliefs, they wouldn’t depict animals as well (fig. 56). However, Ottoman intellectuals opened a legitimate ground for realistic figures. Therefore, explaining the great number of non-figurative paintings needs another layer which should be the free and conscious choice of painters regarding functionality and expectations from them. Even though some painters were not skilled at painting figures as the curricula did not allow them to develop their skills, some of them took private lessons and became advanced in figurative painting.
239 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 94.
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Fig. 45 Zekâi Paşa, İbrahim Edhem Efendi, Özlem İnay Erten, Hüseyin Zekai Paşa ve Mübeccel Hazineler, İstanbul: Bozlu Art Project, 31.
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Fig. 46 Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, Portrait, oil on canvas, 32 x 34 cm, Aydın Zekâî Bill- Acar Bill Collection. Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 381.
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Fig. 47 Süleyman Seyyid, Old Man, 35x32, oil on canvas, Private collection. Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 56.
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Fig. 48 Süleyman Seyyid, Dervish, watercolor on paper, 55 x 40 cm, Private Collection. Sezer Tansuğ, Çağdaş Türk Sanatı, 376.
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Fig. 49 Süleyman Seyyid, Nude, 47x33 cm, Galip Tomaç Collection, Gülay İnce, “Süleyman Seyyid: Türk Resminde Natürmort Öncüsü,” 296.
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Fig. 50 Hoca Ali Rıza, Hayreddin Bey, oil on cardboard, 31 x 20 Cem Ener Collection, Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 212.
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Fig. 51 Hoca Ali Rıza, Woman and her child, charcoal on paper, 15.5 x 8.5, Gülbün Mesara Collection, Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 477.
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Fig. 52 Şeker Ahmed Paşa, Self Portrait, 1880s, oil on canvas, 118x85 cm, Painting and Sculpture Museum, Istanbul. Turan Erol, “Painting in Turkey,” 111.
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Fig. 53-4 Proportions, Kemal Bey, Vücud-ı Beşer ve Nisbetleri, (left 30, fig. 12. right
25, figure 11.)
Fig. 55 Albrecht Dürer, ..Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion, 1528, 103-104.
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Fig. 56 Şeker Ahmed Paşa, Deer in the Forest, 1886/1887, oil on canvas, 136,5x101 cm, Private Collection. İpek Duben, Türk Resmi ve Eleştirisi, 133.
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CONCLUSION
In this study, I tried to find an intersection point, in terms of the development of the realist attitude in painting, between art history, intellectual history and military modernization of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century.
As the first chapter underlines, there was a military motivation behind an “artistic” development. Military painters were not artists; however, they formed a ground for the participation of Muslims in the artistic production. As military members of the society, they were highly respected by ordinary people. Therefore, military painters’ presence in people’s environs with their brushes and canvases created a legitimized ground for modern painting in the people’s eyes. Moreover, articles published in magazines, oral communication with military students, and practices/measures conducted by military staff helped the awareness of the significance of modern techniques in painting. Even after the inauguration of Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, it had not an impact on the art milieu during the approximately first twenty years.240 Except the figure-based education, military painters were quite acquainted with the modern techniques taught at this school. A remarkable number of the military painters were qualified figure painters; they fulfilled this need abroad or through private lessons. The limited effect of Sanayi-i Nefise and the dominant number of military painters strikes me to think that ideas on realism was shaped mostly by Harbiye and Mühendishane graduates rather than artists. This means, even if a paint work is artistically concerned, receivers or artists continued to look at it for loyal-to-nature and documentative traces. For example, poet, veterinary, teacher, and preacher Mehmed Akif (1873-1936) wrote in his article in 1912 that Ottoman authors cannot write what they observe because Ottoman visual culture was not based on the immediate representation of observation. The lack of mimesis of vision i.e., the realist attitude in painting was the reason behind the problems of Ottoman literature.241 When the role of literature in the late Ottoman Empire is considered, the significance of the link between painting and literature becomes vital in intellectual life.
In another example, one of the most significant poets, author and diplomat Yahya Kemal (1884-1958) expressed in his article, Ottoman/Turkish culture is “resimsiz ve
240 Özge Gençel, “Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi (1882-1928),” (Ph.D. dissertation., Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2021).
241 Mehmed Akif, “Tasvir,” Sırat-ı Müstakim 181, (1912): 391-2.
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nesirsiz” (picture-less and prose-less)242. He complains that they cannot see the faces of their ancestors, old cities, burned or demolished constructions, former clothes, or armies. In the article, Yahya Kemal obviously complains about the absence of historical/ visual documents because of “the lack of European-like painters in the Ottoman Empire.”243 The important point is that he attributes a function to painting as documentary medium.
These issues are directly tied to the second chapter of this work. Like every other field, painting was also functional in the military schools, in scope of this study, Harbiye. As known from the writings of Hoca Ali Rıza and Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, painting and knowledge/technique of painting were instruments to fulfil needs. I would like to re-emphasize that what they expressed in their articles were not masks to legitimize modern painting in the eyes of society. It was based totally on what they learned at Harbiye. Upon this point, loyalty to nature and documentary role expressed by Mehmed Akif and Yahya Kemal must be disseminated dominantly by Harbiye graduates – although I think that this can be extended to whole military painters, I used “dominantly” because painting instructors graduated from Harbiye were much more crowded in military and civilian schools especially after the 1860s. In addition, I think that the definition/scope of art in the nineteenth century was determined by this group to an extent. Of course, sanayi-i nefise (fine arts) had a place as concept but slight differences and intersections with artisanship were highly permeable. The early twentieth century’s conceptual discussion in the introduction part of this study was much comprehensive than it was represented here, and the main reason behind this multi-layered discussion was the permeability/interchangeability of art terms resulted from the transparent borders fine arts and artisanship. At this point, it is not far-fetched to think that this transparency was the ground of military painters, as people who learned painting in function and continued as instructors, and then -to a very lesser extent- artists.
As painting instructors and artists, military painters contributed to the transformation of many issues in the eyes of ordinary people. Aniconism debate was one of the most important topics among them. Their reputation in the society and new interpretations of figurative depiction along with their religious character helped the
242 Yahya Kemal, Edebiyata Dair, (İstanbul: İstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1990), 69-72. 243 Ya tıpkı Avrupa milletlerinde olduğu gibi, bizde de şehirde ve her devirde birçok ressamlarımız olsaymış ve o ressamlar, her biri kendi ihtisasına göre, milli ve şahsi hayatımızın her safhasına tasvir etselermiş ve o tasvirler bize kadar gelselermiş biz onlara bakarak, büyük geniş ve derin tarihimizi her az görebilseymişiz! Ah! Ah! Bu ne üzüntülü bir özleyiştir. Yahya Kemal, Edebiyata Dair, 70.
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transformation of an “unlawful act” into an aid to corroborate the faith. Of course, Tıbbiye students and the rise of photography in Istanbul played the crucial role about the multi-layered relationship between modernization, science, education, documentation, and human body.244 However, when the issue comes to the figurative depiction, Harbiye students and instructors shaped the minds in the military and civilian schools.
Moreover, the lack of artistic concern in military painters’ production doesn’t decrease the value of their works as art historical materials. Because of the instrumentality of art as emphasized throughout the work, the formation of an art market, the development of modern art, or the training of professional artists were not in the aims of this school's painting classes.
However, this is not an argument that can be consistently valid at the individual level. Artistic concerns or artistic pursuits can be found in the works of some military painters, especially after graduation or retirement. Considering this point, the focal point of the study is limited to the role played by two genres (landscape-still life) and the effect on military painters’ pictorial preferences. For this reason, the study’s limit suggests that the starting point of the paintings transformed Harbiye’s painting workshop into the practice field.
My secondary concerns, such as their contribution to art and the art scene, are related to the perception’s transformation at the destination, not at the starting point. My only contribution to this subject, which goes beyond the limits of the study, may be to assume that landscape and still life formed a basis for the later attempts of military painters.
Of course, these painters were aware of the role of art to be a “modern” state. As the forerunners of modern painting, even if mostly from a distinct path and much less in number, they organized exhibitions, participated in them, and contributed to the development of the understanding, art for art’s sake. Moreover, their emphasis on functionality legitimized flourishing realism’s consolidation in the Ottoman artistic atmosphere and in the ordinary people’s eyes. Discussions revolved around realistic depictions that helped the fusion of modernization and classical Ottoman codes.
244 For the attitude at Tıbbiye, see Charles Mac Farlane, Turkey and its Destiny: The Result of Journeys Made in 1847 and 1848 to Examine into the State of that Country, vol II, (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), 165-166. and for the rise of photography, see Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem (eds.), Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1914, (İstanbul, Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2015).
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With the opening of Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, the Ottoman Muslim artist is even more articulated to the constantly diversifying and expanding art scene in Pera. Here, the modern painting appears as an intersection point between military painters and artists, as it includes all elements such as linear perspective, color, and figure. Therefore, when considered on an individual basis, there is a common ground for military painters to integrate into this environment when there is no expectation as a soldier. For example, one of the leading roles in the artistic conflict between Üsküdar and Pera belonged to Hoca Ali Rıza. The new graduates of Sanayi-i Nefise chose Hoca Ali Rıza as the flagbearer of their oppositional attitude. While Pera was at the forefront as the place of Sanayi-i Nefise teachers, orientalists, and levantines; Üsküdar becomes a place of opposition to this culture. 245 Hoca Ali Rıza, who retired in 1911 following these events, which coincided with the last years of his teaching, now finds the chance to devote himself to art, free from duties, and educates countless students. Naturally, this situation is one of the most important factors that pave the way for painting, the love of painting, and the upbringing of an artist.
Another important point is that the pioneering role of military painters in the spread of modern painting was recognized in their own time. Hoca Ali Rıza and Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa, were included in Sanayi-i Nefise Encümeni (Fine Arts Committee), which the Ministry of Education established in 1917. 246 This example also shows that artists and the state have always noticed their contribution to the art environment.
In addition to the group exhibitions, opened in Mekteb-i Sanayi in 1873 and Darülfünun in 1875; Şeker Ahmed Paşa exhibited his works at Pera Palace in 1897/8, Magasin de Consigation in 1898/9, in 1900/1901, Tokatlıyan Passage. He opened another exhibition at the Pera Palace Hotel in the same year. Şeker Ahmed, whose name was also found in the salon exhibitions held in 1901 and 1902, led a productive life as his paintings and exhibitions show, despite the heavy burden of his duty as a chief aide until his death.247 In 1909, Hoca Ali Rıza opened his first personal exhibition and organized an event where his artistic concerns come to the fore.248 After his retirement in 1910, Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa focused on painting. Even his works, which are seen as the pioneers
245 Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 15.
246 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 67. Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 83.
247 Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu, and Ilona Baytar (eds.), Şeker Ahmet Paşa 1841-1907, 235.
248 Ömer Faruk Şerifoğlu (ed.), İstanbul’un Ressamı Hoca Ali Rıza, 67.
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of impressionism in Ottoman painting, coincide with the years after his retirement249 (fig. 58). He also wrote the book Mübeccel Hazineler, among the vital sources in art historiography, which Hüseyin Zekâi wrote in 1913. He participated in Galatasaray Exhibitions for three years in 1916, 1917, and 1919.250
Fig. 57 Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, Erenköy, oil on canvas, 60x80 cm, Painting and Sculpture Museum, 456/43. Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 377.
As available data show, works of military painters were predominated by artistic concern after leaving their posts, as seen especially in the examples of Hoca Ali Rıza and Hüseyin Zekâi Paşa. Moreover, some of them identified themselves with painting and art, as the famous self-portrait of Şeker Ahmed Paşa (fig. 51) demonstrates. While this study strives to reveal the instrumental role attributed to painting by the painters trained at Harbiye, it does not deny the artistic concerns such as the search for a style in the paths they draw themselves, apart from their duties.
249 Özlem İnay Erten, “Çok Yönlü Bir Kişilik: Ressam Hüseyin Zekai Paşa,” 64.
250 Ibid., 67.
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This study was just an “introductory” examination attempt to the “military” side of military painters. Its extension to written sources on Mühendishane, Bahriye, Tıbbiye such as textbooks has a great potential to unveil dynamics encircling the visual production of military painters. After these studies, the chance of drawing a wider panorama under the light of visual and written sources could be possible. Moreover, further personal information about the individuals mentioned in this study can change the arguments. Deeper research on individual relationships between military staff, ulema, authors and artists; intellectual circles around the school and in the city; political changes; economic concerns; and comprehensive analysis of information in textbooks will show unseen dimensions of Harbiye.
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