Osman Hamdi Bey
Today we present a painting created by Osman Hamdi Bey, a Turkish intellectual, art expert, and prominent pioneering painter. It presents the outer wall of an old Ottoman building and includes a window with a pediment of tiles and geometric decorations with iron lattice, a shade fixed to the lattice and wall, and two women dictating a letter to the petitioner sitting under the shade.
The petitioner after whom the painting is named is, as is frequently the case in Osman Hamdi Bey’s paintings, sitting on a Persian rug on a low wooden cot with thin legs, gazing at the sheet in his hand, with his writing box in front of him. He has a loose long-sleeved caftan over his yellow gown. There is a medal pattern ornamented with rather big flowers in the caftan’s fabric. The feet and gown of the petitioner are unfinished, which is similar to other works by the artist.
We also see two of the stray dogs frequently seen in the streets of 19th-century Istanbul, but very rarely in Osman Hamdi Bey’s paintings.