The Tortoise Trainer is a painting by Osman Hamdi Bey, with a first version created in 1906 and a second in 1907. Hamdi's painting of an anachronistic historical character attempting to train tortoises is usually interpreted as a satire on the slow and ineffective attempts at reforming the Ottoman Empire.

Osman Hamdi Bey was an Ottoman administrator, intellectual, art expert and also a prominent and pioneering painter. He was the Ottoman Empire's first modern archaeologist, and is regarded as the founding father of both archaeology and the museum curator's professions in Turkey. He was the founder of Istanbul Archaeology Museums and of the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts known today as the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He was also the first mayor of Kadıköy.