‘The Scrivener’ (also known as The Petitioner) is among Osman Hamdi Bey’s depictions of everyday Ottoman life. The composition is set before the stone façade of an old Ottoman building. A window with a çini-tiled pediment, covered by an iron grille with geometric decoration, is depicted along with a canopy fixed to the window and wall, forming the architectural backdrop of the scene. Beneath this canopy sits the scrivener with two women in robes, dictating letters to him, and two dogs moving about them.
The çini panel visible in the painting, no longer in its original location, was documented by the French architect Léon Parvillée in his ‘Architecture et Décoration Turques’ [‘Turkish Architecture and Decoration’] from 1894. It once adorned the exterior window pediment of the Mausoleum of Şehzade Mustafa in the Muradiye Complex at Bursa. Osman Hamdi Bey was familiar with the building, and Parvillée’s book was part of his library. Tiles recur as a motif in many of his later paintings; in some works they appear as İznik examples, in others as floral borders or panels decorated with calligraphy. His use of such architectural elements is never merely decorative; they root the composition in Ottoman material culture and lend a sense of authenticity to the scene.
At the centre of the composition sits the scrivener, on a low wooden platform covered with a Persian carpet, a textile that also appears in other paintings by the artist. He leans over his writing case, glancing at the sheet before him. Over his yellow robe he wears a long-sleeved kaftan patterned with large floral medallions. As in the painting, ‘Hodja Reading the Qur’an’ (200-0087-OHB), the lower part of the figure and his robe remain unfinished.
Female figures in this type of robe (‘ferace’) are a recurring feature of Osman Hamdi Bey’s work. They are usually shown in brightly coloured, lace-trimmed or embroidered fabrics that reveal a subtle outline of the body and allude to an affluent social milieu. In ‘The Scrivener’, however, the two women wear plain blue and black garments, suggesting a more modest social background. The two dogs in the composition recall the familiar presence of strays in nineteenth-century Ottoman streets. These details in the artist’s oeuvre introduce both naturalism and a strong sense of contemporary urban life. At times the same carpets, figures or animals appear across different canvases, revealing the artist's practice of constructing scenes from an established visual repertoire.
‘The Scrivener’ also reflects Osman Hamdi Bey’s distinctive engagement with the Orientalist tradition. In contrast to the exoticising gaze of many Western painters, he built his scenes from an insider’s perspective. Yet these carefully detailed depictions simultaneously offered Western viewers the kind of imagery they expected of the ‘East’. The painting thus conveys the credible particulars of daily life while also resonating with an Orientalist framework familiar to the audiences before whom it might have been exhibited.
