Past Perfect: An Artist’s Impression of Turkish Jerusalem

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Emelene Abbey Dunn (1859–1929) was an American landscape painter and art teacher. After graduating from the Free Academy in Rochester, New York, Dunn studied under the artists Caliere Corcos and Longworth Powers in Florence, Italy, and later Monsier Dube in Paris. Upon returning to the United States, she became a leader in the development of arts education programs nationwide. For 20 years, Dunn managed the Normal Art School in New York, an academy for training art teachers. During World War I, she devoted herself to Red Cross efforts in comforting Allied soldiers. During this period she developed health problems that forced her to return to Rochester, where she died in 1929.

Following is an excerpt from Dunn’s Mediterranean Picture Lands (1929), a collection of her landscape paintings and notes from her travels in the Near East in 1903, describing her impressions on entering Ottoman-controlled Jerusalem.

In entering Jerusalem by the Jaffa Gate one feels like the Crusaders who cried, “The Saracens are in the Holy City, let us be about its rescue!”

Latent sparks of missionary spirit become flames of desire which are, nevertheless, soon quenched by the hopelessness of the situation. At the Gate of David, the Turk sits in the seat of custom and exacts for the Sultan a percentage of all foodstuffs carried by poor farmers and shepherds into the City of David. The father of the family from the barren hill farm must produce a coin for the collector before he may pass into the market city with his pitiable basket of eggs or his half dozen of melons.

Camels stand without while their masters barter wool and goat’s cheese within the gate. The shepherd in his striped coat of black and white wool may sell his sheep for a good price, but always remains poor because of the tax upon the sale. The baker hawks his tray of bread among those who come out or go in to avoid the duty which is sure to be taken, and the greengrocer frankly establishes himself in everyone’s way to sell his cauliflower and attractive tomatoes. Even the old beggar plies a good trade outside the prohibitive gate.

Except when the Kaiser rode through with his military suite, the changeless gate has been the merchant’s and traveler’s porte ever since Jaffa offered its treacherous harbor as the maritime entrance to the Holy Land. Crusader and tourist, commander and monarch, have passed over the same road, have climbed the same dusty hill to reach the city of their dreams. For who has not dreamed of Jerusalem? Who has not pictured its crannied walls, its quaint winding streets, and the arch and its shadow upon the muddy pavements of those lanes of history? Few reach the City of David without some ideals of its meaning and aspect.

The plains of ill-kept land, the mountain fastness of prophet and outlaw, the grassy hills of the goatherd, the church of the Crusaders, and the tomb of Rachel have awakened memories of childish Bible lessons long ago replaced by actual lessons of life. To verify the old stories or to seek their characters is the first inclination of the visitor, but the gate with its crescent and red banner is a startling novelty. The presence of Turkish soldiers, officers, guides, and merchants indicates the condition of the beloved city as no verbal statement could describe it.

The streets of the city are soiled with the filth of years. Its various peoples are poverty stricken, its Jewish population the most pathetic sight in the world. “If we could but do something to help!” is the first and last cry of the heart in Jerusalem. But after passing the sightless, half-starved people and pitifully noting their diseased and downtrodden aspect, the situation indeed seems hopeless, for the red flag with the crescent waves over their home.

To be sure, spots of white-heartedness are to be found in Jerusalem. The Russian hospice has established an ophthalmic clinic where sightless eyes may be treated for comfort and less hopeless ones for restored vision. The American Colony 066has opened the door for education. Many countries are sending mission workers who sacrifice the tie of life for the sake of these neglected souls and bodies. But the Turk remains. He sits in high places ruling city and country, master of the most sacred spot in the world.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which at least perpetuates the personality of Christ, is guarded as Turkish property by an officer of the Sultan. The threshing floor of Old Testament days is covered by the Sultan’s favorite mosque. Even the interposition of Constantine and his mother Helena has not saved the sacred places from the hand of the conqueror. Was there not land enough! … A thousand mental queries crowd. All are answered by the red flag at the Jaffa Gate.

But although one spends his days in sadness in Jerusalem, many bits of comfort remain. The city is intensely interesting, full of the picturesque, nobly beautiful. Pick your way along the unclean street under the arch of Ecce Homo, and touch with thoughtful finger the old wall of David. Realize that this water carrier who shoulders the big jar has drawn mountain water from a well coexistent with the Temple, and that the shadows of this hour have lain just here for thousands of slowly succeeding years. Instead of Armenian peasants, imagine the procession in which Christ bore His cross, or recall, if you can, the pageants of the Shepherd Kings.

Note the domes of many nations in this cosmopolitan city, which harbors within its thick walls people from every known quarter of the globe. The Turkish people occupy the more comfortable houses. They have hung latticed balconies on the hoary walls for their women, who may not go upon the street, but who still share with all the curiosity of the race.

The cold sunshine and colder rain fall on the very stones of Christ’s day, and shops and trades are as they were at the beginning of our era.

Melons and gourds are still bartered in “holes in the wall” which serve as shop and home. Old lamps from the mosques are pressed upon the shopper when golden candlesticks fail to effect a purchase. Stuffs from Damascus, the shepherd’s coat from Bethlehem, grace the worldly counter, which is often attended by the Mecca devotee in green turban. His cheap brasses and Arabian frets catch the reflection of the tiny brazier of charcoal which, with a few precious roots from olive trees, forms the fuel supply of Jerusalem. Life such as this, in abject poverty and degradation, may still appear picturesque because of the kindliness of the people.

Having seen the beauties of Mohammedan mosques, go to the Wailing Place on Friday morning to witness the lamentations of the Jews, who are shut out of their city of Zion, and therefore come here to the base of its old wall to pray, to weep, to recite Jeremiah’s lamentations, to drive nails into cracks, that the wall may be felled and their city restored. Whether you wield brush or pen, whether the tears and the attitudes you see be real or assumed, you will find much to express to others.

Emelene Abbey Dunn (1859–1929) was an American landscape painter and art teacher. After graduating from the Free Academy in Rochester, New York, Dunn studied under the artists Caliere Corcos and Longworth Powers in Florence, Italy, and later Monsier Dube in Paris. Upon returning to the United States, she became a leader in the development of arts education programs nationwide. For 20 years, Dunn managed the Normal Art School in New York, an academy for training art teachers. During World War I, she devoted herself to Red Cross efforts in comforting Allied soldiers. During this period she developed health problems […]