A QAJAR STILL-LIFE DEPICTING BOWLS OF FRUITS
Qajar Iran, early 19th century

A QAJAR STILL-LIFE DEPICTING BOWLS OF FRUITS
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE LONDON ESTATE
Qajar Iran, early 19th century

Oil on canvas, the vertical composition depicting a charming still-life ensemble of ripe fruits including persimmons, pears, oranges, and half watermelon, and a bowl of small cucumbers, all presented in colourful Chinese Guangdong famille rose porcelain vessels decorated with lush rose sprays and bouquets including two large bowls and two smaller deep saucers, arranged partly on a stepped ledge and partly on a golden tray on a dark floorspread with golden floral trellis next to a Safavid-style blue and white vase filled with a mixed floral bouquet, mounted, stretched and framed, 85.5cm x 75.5cm including the frame.

Provenance: Purchased by the present owner in Paris in the mid-1960s and in the UK since.

Still-life compositions such as our lot became increasingly popular in the Qajar artistic canon from the very end of the 18th century onward. The first Persian masters experimenting with this style of painting were heavily indebted to their Western counterparts, leading to a progressive departure in the century to come and to a proper "Persianisation" of the subjects and their rendering. These paintings were often conceived as "filler" images, rather than the main subject of a painting. Thus, they proved suitable architectural decorations, appearing as backgrounds for niches, reception rooms and panels in garden pavilions (Layla S. Diba, Royal Persian Paintings, the Qajar Epoch, New York, 1999, p. 214).

Differently from Western still-lives, the overall arrangement of our painting appears to be quite schematic, and the little use of chiaro-scuro causes a flattening effect. Nevertheless, the composition is pervaded by a sense of lushness and exotic flare, and the palette is very much in tune with Qajar oil paintings.

A similar Qajar still-life showing half watermelon on a stepped ledge in front of a tray of mixed fruit and vegetable was offered in a prestigious Habsburg Feldman auction focusing on Qajar art in New York, 19 June 1990, lot 70, showing the ubiquitousness of this kind of arrangement and pictorial subjects. Other three similar Qajar paintings of fruits in Guangdong bowls, one of which was attributed to the early Qajar master Mirza Baba, were published in the catalogue of the Amery Collection (S. J. Falk, Qajar Paintings, 1972, cats. 3, 10, and 11), an extensive collection of 63 Qajar paintings assembled by the British Major Harold Amery and his brother, which was returned to Iran to the personal art collection of Her Imperial Majesty Farah Pahlavi just a few years before the Iranian Revolution broke out (Ibidem, p. 57). This is indicative of how popular and collectable these paintings were among Western travellers visiting Iran in the mid-20th century.

(Quantity:1)

Dimensions: 85.5cm x 75.5cm including the frame