Osman Hamdi Bey

Painter, archaeologist and museum founder. He established the Imperial School of Fine Arts in 1882 and became the first director of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, and the Ottoman Empire's first restrictions on the export of antiquities came about at his instigation. His figure compositions — The Tortoise Trainer, The Public Scribe, Reciting the Quran — read as an answer from the inside to the outsider's gaze of Western orientalism.