Tomb, Marie (2018) The portrait of a country: painters, the art world and the invention of Lebanon 1880‐1943. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30260 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. The Portrait of a Country: Painters, the Art World, and the Invention of Lebanon 1880-1943 Marie Tomb Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2017 Department of History SOAS, University of London Acknowledgements First and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to Dr Nelida Fuccaro for her continuous support and her precious guidance throughout the writing of my dissertation. I would also like to thank Bérénice Tomb, Roland Tomb and Jamil Baz for their sustained and enthusiastic assistance and encouragement. 2 ABSTRACT 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 painters of the period, Moustafa Farroukh (1901- 1957), Omar Onsi (1901-1969), and César Gemayel (1898-1958), proposed conservative aesthetic theories and defined their conception of the artist’s role in society. Chapter 5 analyses their works, which most frequently represented an idealised Mountain physical and social landscape, hinting at their patrons’ possible conflicted relationship with modernity. Part III looks at the visual presentation of the country to foreign audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s. Chapter 6 examines the presentation of Lebanon as an authentic Mountain holiday destination by the tourism industry, which would take up artists’ aesthetics and themes. Chapter 7 turns to the role of art in the conceptualisation of Lebanon in large-scale international events. The Mandate authorities exploited art to assert their power at the 1921 Foire-Exposition de Beyrouth and at the Exposition Coloniale de Vincennes in 1931. However, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, art helped affirm the autonomy of the Lebanese Republic. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT 7 INTRODUCTION 12 PRIMARY SOURCES 51 PART I: THE GENESIS OF AN ART WORLD 55 CHAPTER 1: NINETEENTH-CENTURY VISUAL CULTURE AND THE INVENTION OF THE HISTORY OF PAINTING IN LEBANON 56 I. Historical Christian and Muslim attitudes towards the image in Lebanon 58 II. Private consumption of images in the Mutasarrifiyya and Beirut: photography and painting as expressions of status and modernity 65 III. The counterpoint: Ottoman officers painting celebrations of the Empire in Beirut 77 IV. Moustafa Farroukh, Victor Hakim, and writing the history of Lebanese painting after independence 80 CHAPTER 2: BECOMING A PAINTER IN LATE OTTOMAN BEIRUT: DAOUD CORM AND THE MAKING OF THE FIRST INTEGRATED PROFESSIONAL ARTISTS, C. 1880 - C. 1930 95 I. Contemporaneous and posthumous biographies of Corm forge and qualify his myth 97 II. Corm’s, Serour’s, and Saleeby’s success at home and abroad 109 III. The Lebanese professional artists’ new modes of operation: from sacred art to painting the elite’s social mores 115 PART II: SHOWING ART IN BEIRUT AND TALKING ABOUT IT 133 CHAPTER 3: A GROWING ART WORLD: PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS AND CRITICAL STANCES IN 1930s BEIRUT 134 I. Painters at arts and crafts exhibitions, 1921-1930 138 II. Beirut’s new exhibitionary complex and the Lebanese-French elite culture 140 III. The critics’ views on the new art world 156 IV. A different model of professional painter: the gender boundaries and social advantages of Marie Hadad 168 CHAPTER 4: LEBANESE PAINTERS’ AESTHETIC POSITIONS AND CONCEPTION OF THEIR ROLES, 1930s-40s 177 I. How to paint 180 5 II. The role of art 191 III. Samples of visual commentary on Lebanese society 202 CHAPTER 5: PAINTING AUTHENTIC LEBANON: THE LANDSCAPE AND ITS PEOPLE, 1930s- 1940s 213 I. Painting Lebanon: a project made in Beirut, for Beirut 215 II. The Mountain’s social landscape: the authentic Lebanese village 219 III. The natural landscape as the essence of Lebanon 231 IV. Beirut becomes the Mountain 241 PART III: LEBANON EXPORTS ITS IMAGE 251 CHAPTER 6: MARKETING THE MOUNTAIN IDYLL: VISUAL PROMOTION OF TOURISM IN LEBANON, 1920s-1950s 252 I. Developing the Mountain holiday 256 II. Official visual marketing of tourism: the case of postage stamps 263 III. Guidebooks to Lebanon: the journey throughout the countryside 267 IV. The view from abroad: the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway company posters 282 CHAPTER 7: LEBANON AT INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS IN THE 1920s and 1930s 289 I. The 1921 Foire-Exposition de Beyrouth 292 II. The Pavillon des États du Levant at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale de Vincennes 306 III. The 1939 New York World’s Fair 319 CONCLUSION 346 BIBLIOGRAPHY 366 Primary sources 366 Visual sources 372 Books and articles 374 LIST OF IMAGES 384 IMAGES 398 6 ABSTRACT This dissertation studies the visual representations of Lebanon put forward by its painters and its art world during the period covering the last four 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 forging its identity as an autonomous political unit, and also corresponds with the formation of a local art world: the first professional painters, trained in Europe, started their careers in the 1880s, and, by the 1940s, a fully-fledged art world had taken shape, with a culture of public exhibitions. This defining period for Lebanon is often studied in terms of political history, with a focus on the tensions within the Lebanese political and intellectual spheres around the country’s ideological outlook, on the mandatory authorities’ projects for the country, and on the nature of an independent Lebanon, defined by intersectarian cooperation, and a compromise between its Arab identity and its orientation towards the West. On the other hand, art history and the history of artistic expression, as part of a broader cultural, political, and social scene, can give an idea of how individuals outside the world of politics and political debates also elaborated certain conceptions of Lebanon during the same period. More specifically, the investigation of painting reveals an alternative fashioning of Lebanon, not only created outside the political sphere but also ostensibly apolitical. Inevitably, though, a close look at Lebanese art brings forth the ideological attitudes of its makers and patrons. Artists did not propose a unified conception of Lebanon, but elaborated several intersecting ones dependent on the 7 conditions of art commissioning, production, display, and reception. And while the study of painting reveals an alternative fashioning of Lebanon, art was nevertheless informed by and reflective of socioeconomic developments. Painting only involved a small segment of Lebanese society, namely, Beirut’s sociocultural elite, to which patrons, art writers and artists belonged; the public consisted of Lebanese and French merchants, professionals, politicians, and intellectuals. The story of painting, thus, reflects the formation of this elite’s artistic culture and taste. When made and shown at home, the images of Lebanon produced by Lebanese painters moreover corresponded to the way their patrons wished to represent themselves and their country. Artists such as Daoud Corm (1852-1930), Habib Serour (1863-1938), and Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928) focused on painting the portraits of self-declared modern individuals from around 1880 to 1930, and, later, painters like César Gemayel (1898-1958), Moustafa Farroukh (1901-1957), and Omar Onsi (1901-1969) depicted idealised Mountain landscapes that hint at their patrons’ possible desire to vicariously project themselves into an allegedly unscathed natural scene. In terms of taste, this Westernised art world claimed to favour conventional European figuration. The signification of Lebanon’s visual representation fluctuated according to the context of commission and display. When Lebanese painters’ production was shown to a foreign public in particular, its meaning was modified. The tourism industry, for instance, would take up artists’ aesthetics and themes, but add to them elements attractive to European visitors. In international events that incorporated art, 8 painters and sculptors could work on commission to suit the message that the exhibitions’ French or Lebanese organisers wanted to communicate. Part I, THE GENESIS OF AN ART WORLD, examines the professionalisation of painting between the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the Mandate.