The portrait of a country : painters, the art world and the invention of Lebanon, 1880-1943
This dissertation studies the visual representation of Lebanon put forward by its painters and its art world during the period covering the last decades of the Ottoman Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon (1860-1918), the French Mandate (1920-1943), and the first years of the independent Lebanese Republic, after 1943. The period coincides with Lebanon's forging its identity as an autonomous political unit, but it also corresponds with the formation of a local art world. While the investigation of painting reveals an alternative fashioning of Lebanon created outside the political sphere, art was nevertheless informed by socioeconomic developments. Part I examines the professionalisation of painting between the 1880s and the 1920s. Chapter 1 looks at the adoption of Western painting and other kinds of images, among them photography, in the Mutasarrifiyya and in Beirut. Chapter 2 retraces the careers of the first professional painters, Daoud Corm (1852-1930), Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928), and Habib Serour (1863-1938). Part II studies the formation of an art world in the 1930s and 1940s. Chapter 3 investigates the formation of an elite artistic culture centred on the art show. Chapter 4 examines instances when the leading
Tomb, Marie
The portrait of a country : painters, the art world and the invention of Lebanon, 1880-1943. This dissertation studies the visual representation of Lebanon put forward by its painters and its art world during the period covering the last decades of the Ottoman Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon (1860-1918), the French Mandate (1920-1943), and the first years of the independent Lebanese Republic, after 1943. The period coincides with Lebanon's forging its identity as an autonomous political unit, but it also corresponds with the formation of a local art world. While the investigation of painting reveals an alternative fashioning of Lebanon created outside the political sphere, art was nevertheless informed by socioeconomic developments. Part I examines the professionalisation of painting between the 1880s and the 1920s. Chapter 1 looks at the adoption of Western painting and other kinds of images, among them photography, in the Mutasarrifiyya and in Beirut. Chapter 2 retraces the careers of the first professional painters, Daoud Corm (1852-1930), Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928), and Habib Serour (1863-1938). Part II studies the formation of an art world in the 1930s and 1940s. Chapter 3 investigates the formation of an elite artistic culture centred on the art show. Chapter 4 examines instances when the leading
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