Conclusion

Ottoman Istanbul, the capital of a multi-ethnic state ruled by a predominantly Muslim elite, provides a provocative context from which to re-examine nineteenth-century Orientalism and empire.

This was a period of intense debate in the imperial capital, as the Ottoman elites responded to the global economic and political ascendancy of Western Europe by redefining their culture as westernising but not Western.⁴² The Ottoman visual culture addressed throughout this chapter intersected with this broader political agenda of a modernising Ottoman state. Art was used to facilitate international political alliances and promote the empire on the world stage. Successive sultans saw imperial portraiture and historic battle painting as resources for the empire’s diplomatic engagement within a ‘connected world of Empires’.⁴³ At the same time Ottoman artists and patrons adapted and transformed codes of Western art to express Ottoman cultural values, both at the newly emergent exhibitions in the public sphere and within the private realms of the empire’s wealthy households. In the process artists re-envisioned the empire’s visual heritage as its cultural patrimony. It would be erroneous to interpret these paintings as slavish imitations of Western culture. Many of them were antithetical to Western Orientalist tropes of the exotic East and were often aesthetically hybrid works of art drawing on imported and local visual traditions. A close study of artworks produced in the late Ottoman Empire resituates Western Orientalism within an expanded narrative of visual culture and emphasises the myriad ways that art served diverse imperial interests in the nineteenth century.

Notes

1 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978).

2 Linda Nochlin, ‘The Imaginary Orient', Art in America, Vol. 71, No. 5 (May 1983), pp. 118-131, 187-191.

Republished in Linda Nochlin, The Politics of Vision: Essays on.Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York, 1989), pp. 33-59.

3 Nochlin, ‘The Imaginary Orient', p. 39.

4 Zeynep Celik in ‘Colonialism, Orientalism and the Canon', Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 2 (1996), pp. 202-205.

5 Zeynep Celik, ‘Speaking Back to Orientalist Discourse at the World's Columbian Exposition', in Holly Edwards (ed.), Noble Dreams Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930 (New Jersey, 2000), p. 96.

6 Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts (eds), Orientalism's Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography (Durham, NC, 2002). For a study of art in the Maghreb, see Roger Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism and French North Africa, 1880-1930 (Berkeley, 2003). For a study of print culture, photography and architecture in Algiers in the same period, see Zeynep Celik et al., Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City through Text and Image (Los Angeles, 2009). See also Celik's comparative study of architecture, city planning and public ceremony in both French colonial and Ottoman contexts, Zeynep Celik, Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914 (Seattle, 2008). For a study of Persian royal painting in the nineteenth century, see Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar (eds), Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785-1925, Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York, 1998); and Julian Raby, Qajar Portraits: Figure Paintings from Nineteenth Century Persia (London 1999).

7 Said, Orientalism, p. 87; and Description de l'Egypte, ou recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont ete faites en Egypte pendant l'expedition de l'armee franyaise, publie par les ordres de sa majeste l'empereur Napoleon le grand, 23 vols (Paris, 1809-1828).

8 Μ. Sükrü Hanioglu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 2008), p. 47.

9 Ibrd, p. 48.

10 On the history of Ottoman diplomacy and the move to establish resident diplomacy, see Nuri Yurdusev (ed.), Ottoman Diplomacy: Conventional or Unconventional? (New York, 2004).

11 Documentation about this commission and its purpose is in the Topkapi Archives (TSM 570/2). See Selmin Kangal (ed.), The Sultan's Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman, Priscilla M. Isin (trans.) (Istanbul, 2000), p. 473; and Günsel Renda, ‘The Bosphorus in Miniature Painting', P: Art, Culture, Antiques, Vol. 4 (2000-2001), pp. 52-67.

12 Richard Sennett, The Crafisman (New Haven, 2008), p. 171.

13 Kangal, The Sultan's Portrait, p. 449.

14 This is a far more complex history than I can do justice to here. See Hanioglu's account of these international relations across the nineteenth century: Hanioglu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, p. 49.

15 The exchange of portraits was also important in the Persian court in this period. Selim III's portrait was hung beside that of the shah and Napoleon in the crown prince's palace in Tabriz. See Raby (ed.), Qajar Portraits, p. 14.

16 Stanford Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Selim III, 1789-1807 (Cambridge, 1971). For an analysis of the range of reforms in the Tanzimat period see Stanford Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 55-171; and Hanioglu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, pp. 72-108.

17 Kangal, The Sultan's Portrait, p. 474.

18 Günsel Renda, ‘Art and Diplomatic Relations: The Story of an Ottoman-British Project in London', in Cultural Encounters and Cultural Differences (Ankara, 1999), p. 233. See also Günsel Renda, ‘Selim III's Portraits and the European Connection', in Art Turc/Turkish Art. 10th International Congress of Turkish Art (Geneva, 1999), pp. 567-573.

19 John Young, A Series of Portraits of the Emperors of Turkey, from the Foundation of the Monarchy to the Year 1808.... With a Biographical Account of Each of the Emperors (London, 1815), p. 117.

Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Celik and Edhem Eldem (eds), Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753--1914 (Istanbul, 2011); Zeynep Celik, Empire, Architecture, and the City; Zeynep Celik, The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1993); Semra Germaner and Zeynep Inankur, Constantinople and the Orientalists (Istanbul, 2002); Bahattin Oztuncay, The Photographers of Constantinople: Pioneers, Studios and Artists from Nineteenth-Century Istanbul, 2 vols (Istanbul, 2003).

On the Ottoman use of visual culture at the World's Fairs, see Zeynep Celik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-century World's Fairs (Berkeley, 1992); Ahmet A. Ersoy, ‘On the Sources of the “Ottoman Renaissance”: Architectural Revival and its Discourse During the Abdülaziz Era (1861-76)', PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2000; and Ahmet Ersoy, ‘A Sartorial Tribute to Late Tanzimat Ottomanism: The Elbise-i ‘Osmaniyye Album', Muqarnas, Vol. 20 (2003), pp. 187-207. On the role of public ceremony as a tool of state power across the empire and internationally during Sultan Abdülhamid II's reign, see Selim Deringil, The Well- Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876--1909 (London,

1999) ; and Zeynep Celik, Empire, Architecture, and the City.

In the later decades of Sultan Abdülhamid's reign photography played a crucial role in state ideology, marked especially by the Abdülhamid Albums gifted to the United States and to Britain. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains; William Allen, ‘The Abdul Hamid II Collection', History of Photography, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1984), pp. 119-145; Jjinasi Tekin and Gonül Alpay Tekin, ‘Imperial Self-Portrait: The Ottoman Empire As Revealed in the Sultan Abdul Hamid II's Photographic Albums, Presented as Gifts to the Library of Congress (1893) and the British Museum (1894)', Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol. 12 (1988).

For a succinct visual account of the empire's expansion and contraction in Europe, see the two maps in Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II, pp. xxii-xxv.

Emine Fetvaci, ‘In the Image of a Military Ruler', Picturing History at the Ottoman Court (Bloomington,

2013), pp. 191-237; and Serpil Bagci, Filiz Cagman, Günsel Renda and Zeren Tanindi, ‘Images of War and Warriors: Illustrated Gazanames', in Ottoman Painting (Istanbul, 2010), pp. 166-177.

On the word-image relationship in the art of the book, see David Roxburgh, ‘The Study of Painting and the Arts of the Book', Muqarnas, Vol.

17 (2000),pp. 1-16; and inPersian painting, David Roxburgh, ‘Micrographia: Toward a Visual Logic of Persianate Painting', Res, Vol. 43 (Spring 2003), pp. 11-30.

For an analysis of the shifts in Ottoman history writing in this period, see Ercüment Kuran, ‘Ottoman Historiography of the Tanzimat Period', in Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt (eds), Historians of the Middle East (Oxford, 1962), pp. 422-429; Christoph K. Neumann, ‘Bad Times and Better Self: Definitions of Identity and Strategies for Development in Late Ottoman Historiography (1850-1900)', in Fikret Adanir and Suraiya Faroqhi (eds), The Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography (Leiden, 2002), pp. 57-78.

On the transformation of Bursa in this period and its significance for notions of Ottoman patrimony, see Beatrice St Laurent, ‘Ottomanization and Modernization: The Architectural and Urban Development of Bursa and the Genesis of Tradition, 1839-1914', PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1989.

Marie de Launay, LArchitecture Ottomane: ouvrage autorise par irade imperiale et publie sous le patronage de Son Excellence Edhem Pacha Ministre des Travaux Publics, President de la Commission Imperiale Ottomane pour ^Exposition Universelle de 1873, a Vienne (Constantinople, 1873); and Ahmet Ersoy, ‘On the Sources of the “Ottoman Renaissance”'.

For illustrations of these paintings, see Mustafa Cezar, Sanatta Bati'ya ayiliy ve Osman Hamdi, 2 vols (Istanbul, 1995).

Abdullah Kamil, La Turquie, 20 August 1880, p. 3.

Ibid.

Egypt was still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire throughout the nineteenth century, even after British occupation in 1882. Although the Ottoman-Egyptian governors from the Muhammad Ali family manoeuvred for increased independence from the Ottoman sultans, culturally they were Ottomans. In defining their own image as rulers of Egypt, they looked to the sultanate in Istanbul as a model. The structure of the Egyptian dynastic households, including their harems, followed the Ottoman precedent, and as a result these elite harems were very similar to those in Istanbul.

Like them, they selectively embraced Western cultural influences.

For a study of the powerful influence of palace women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1993).

34 Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation (London, 1996), pp. 127-190.

35 Mary Adelaide Walker, Eastern Life and Scenery with Excursions in Asia Minor, Mytilene, Crete and Roumania, 2 vols (London, 1886).

36 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 8-18. Mary Walker uses the pseudonym ‘Zeineb’ to disguise the identity of Sultan Abdülmecid’s daughter, Fatma Sultan.

37 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 4.

38 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid notes that Princess Nazli’s salon was one of the three famous salons in late nineteenth-century Cairo in which there were signs of political activity. Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, ‘Rumblings of Opposition’, Egypt and Cromer: A Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations (London, 1968), p. 95. Nazli grew up in a family milieu that was engaged with Western painting, music and sculpture. Her husband, Halil Serif Pa§a, a statesman and diplomat, was a well-known art patron and collector, renowned in Second Empire Paris for his flamboyant lifestyle and extensive collection of nearly one hundred modern and old master paintings. She was one of the first Ottoman women painters working within the Western easel-painting tradition.

39 Allan Sekula, ‘The Body and the Archive’, October, Vol. 39 (Winter 1986), pp. 3-64.

40 Engin Ozendes, From Sebah and Joaillier to Foto Sabah: Orientalism in Photography (Istanbul, 1999); Bahattin Oztuncay Vassilaki Kargopoulo. Photographer to His Majesty the Sultan (Istanbul, 2000); and Oztuncay, The Photographers of Constantinople.

41 For an analysis of the equivalent harem imagery in French North Africa see Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis, 1986).

42 Ussama Makdisi, ‘Ottoman Orientalism’, The American Historical Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (June 2002), pp. 768-796.

43 The term was coined by Bayly and Fawaz, see C.A. Bayly and L.T. Fawaz (eds), Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York, 2002), p. 1.

Conclusion

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