One of seven beautiful Bedouin sisters whom Onsi painted around the year 1934. "Harba" died shortly afterwards, and the six sisters came back asking him for her picture; Onsi had a photograph made for them of this canvas, which is among the finest of his portraits.
Onsi is counted among the most prolific of artists, and this corner of his studio is filled with oils and watercolors. In its middle is a large canvas depicting the building of ships in the age of the Phoenicians; Onsi has since executed this idea a second time in a still larger canvas, which today adorns one of the walls in the halls of the UNESCO Palace in Beirut.
and had reached the sophomore class. I had a strong inclination for the arts in general, and for the art of painting in particular, and Mr. Khalil Saleeby did nothing but encourage me to go on; as for his lady wife, she used to spur me on with her praise, her good guidance, and her uncommon feeling for the understanding of the arts, their appreciation, and the honoring and encouragement of their practitioners... Mrs. Saleeby was one of the cultivated American ladies...
As for my wife, I met her when I was holding an exhibition of my work in 1927; she had lately arrived from France... What pleased me in her was her delicate sense in the appreciation of the arts and her refined feeling in the fineness of her understanding and grasp; and she in her turn admired my art and my canvases, so that it was a mutual admiration which ended in our marriage...
We continued our tour... A burning sigh escaped me, deep and heartfelt, and I went on to say: Is it in any way fair that all the Lebanese in particular, and all people in general, should not enjoy such a tour, slaking their thirst with the sight of beauty, and quenching the longing of their souls, forever athirst to drink their fill from the gushing spring of the arts, which refines souls, polishes spirits, lights up hearts, and shows the way? And the answer to this question of mine, with Mr. Onsi, was this:
"It is the fault of the government, which neglects the arts and the artists and does not open the way
before them to hold the exhibitions which in their turn cultivate the people, refine its taste, and teach it to tell the worthless from the precious. Do you wish, Miss, that I should exhibit my canvases in places that are not our own country's?
Nor have our rich men chosen to be more open-handed than the government in contributing toward the building of such a house; for our rich men — like the mass of the people — are still illiterate in their artistic culture..."
And I wondered: what, I ask, is the reason for this drought among us in the appreciation of beauty and of the arts... And soon the voice of Mr. Omar greeted my ear, saying: There is no doubt that the government's failure to give encouragement, as I have pointed out, has a great effect; and then our school curricula are crammed with every subject under the sun — except those which have to do with refining taste and fostering the love of beauty and the aspiration toward it...
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I did not know how to thank the artist Omar Onsi for his welcome and his kind hospitality... And how I wished, as I shook his hand in farewell, that time had granted a little respite, and that I might steal from him a few moments in which to lose myself among the pines and the shadow and the colors, which the hand of man works upon till he brings them forth in a splendid garb of fine craftsmanship and beauty...