TWO ALBUM PAGES (MURAQQA') WITH PORTRAITS OF RECLINING FIGURES
PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Possibly Bukhara, Central Asia and Iran, 18th and 19th century

Opaque pigments and ink heightened with gold on paper, comprising a portrait of a courtly lady reclining against a large bolster, her breasts uncovered and surrounded by bejwelled adornments, her pose and the drinking bottle and cup in front of her suggesting a state of intoxication and debauchery, a gazelle lying in the foreground, the animal's head also repeated in the golden handles of a large blue and white vase in the background, the composition surrounded by a collage of fragments of 15th-century Bukharan manuscript's illuminated colophons, Safavid calligraphic cartouches in black ink nasta'liq script from unrelated poems, and Qajar album borders with rosette sprays and scrolling vegetal meanders in gold on pink and green grounds, mounted on a later cream cardboard, 32.2cm x 20cm; and a polychrome-painted Qajar portrait of a man reclining against a yellow bolster while petting a cat, set within hot pink and purple borders with golden vegetal motifs, mounted on a later light pink cardboard, the back bearing several handwritten notes from previous owners including '5 out of 16 in the book', an indication this painting was once part of a larger figural muraqqa' album, 34cm x 24cm.