Osman Hamdi Bey Beyond Vision

Osman Hamdi Bey's paintings from the Sabanci University Sakıp Sabancı Museum's Collection, along with findings on the artist's techniques, are presented to art enthusiasts through the 'Osman Hamdi Bey Beyond Vision' exhibition. The exhibition is based on results from the 'Scientific Analysis and Conservation of Osman Hamdi Bey's Paintings' project, completed over two years. It aims to inform visitors about the artist's paint application techniques, materials used and restoration work undergone by the paintings. The conservation and scientific analysis stages are presented sequentially, offering insights into how details invisible to the naked eye in the works of this prominent figure in Turkish art history can contribute to interpreting his art.

This project, constituting the most comprehensive conservation and scientific analysis work on Osman Hamdi Bey's paintings, focused on six paintings from the Sakıp Sabancı Museum's Collection.

The project's first phase involved X-ray imaging of the six paintings to reveal Osman Hamdi Bey's working technique and their current condition, followed by chemical analysis of the paintings' components. Micro samples were embedded in epoxy capsules to preserve their properties and analyzed using SEM-EDS (scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy) to determine the structure, colors, paint layers and texture of the materials used by the artist and their constituent elements. Raman spectroscopy revealed 'fingerprint' graphs of the paints and identified the pigments composing them. Finally, the organic structure of the six paintings was analyzed using FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy), and data was classified through the PCA (principal component analysis) method to determine their characteristics.