Knowledge is the key to a great life This painting titled Young Emir Studying by Osman Hamdi Bey is on view at @Louvre Abu Dhabi © Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi / Photo APF © Département de la Culture et du Tourisme – Abu Dhabi / Photo par APF © دائرة الثقافة والسياحة – أبوظبي/ تصوير وكالة التصويرAPF

There is something fascinating happening in this painting by Osman Hamdi Bey, and unless you're aware of a specific detail, you would have likely missed the point. And that's because this is a painting that perfectly highlights the themes of an Orientalist artwork, but from the point of view of an insider. It's titled A Young Emeer Studying, and it is an artwork that was produced in Turkey by an Ottoman artist who had adopted the Western Visual Language so fluently, he could arrange what the Western world would consider as foreign cultural elements, in ways that were perfectly legible to the Western eye. And unlike European Orientalists, Osman Hamdi Bey didn't need to imagine his culture. Here he simply represents it. Where the Western artist might have depicted the scene as sensuous or passive, Hamdi Bey chooses to show us the silence of the interior life. He doesn't paint the Ameer as a relic of a foreign fantasy, but rather as he is. A live and by all accounts normal. Hamdi Bey corrects the Western fantasy about his world from the inside out. He doesn't romanticize the nature of his existence because to exist doesn't require anything more. In Hamdi Bey's world, day-to-day life might take the shape of a quiet reflection. Today he studies, and it's the young Ameer's unbroken focus that holds hours. From his feet to his brilliant green robe, which is symbolic of a sacred and spiritual connection, to his head and beyond, we read the painting from right to left, a proxy for the way that he reads the Arabic texts in the book, and in the same way one would read the Kufi calligraphy on the wall above. Where a European might have used the motif of calligraphy as a decorative element, Hamdi Bey embeds Quranic inscription into the wall itself, and the text becomes the structural centerpiece of the entire painting. It stretches the horizontal axis of the artwork, and at the same time, signifies the moral language of the Ottoman identity. Hamdi Bey also stages the space with a mix of other important elements, which together deliver the most important message of all. His culture is vast, far larger than the umbrella that the Western point of view suggests. This isn't folklore, this isn't a fairy tale, this is real life. It's thoughtful, it's delicate, and sometimes nothing more than an opportunity to study.