QAJAR PORTRAIT OF A HAREM GIRL

oil on canvas, framed
141 by 89.5cm

The artist Muhammad Hasan was active during the second half of Fath ‘Ali’s reign, and the first part of Muhammad Shah’s reign. He was noted for producing elegant and sensuous paintings of young women such as the present example. A comparable painting also attributed to Muhammad Hasan can be found in the State Museum of Fine Arts in Tiflis, Georgia, and shows a similarly attired maiden kneeling upon a carpet and wearing a dress with a scalloped neck embroidered with roses, and wide-legged trousers with the same scrolling motif. She is clasping a mirror and a jewelled hair ornament, and the painting is executed in the same style.

Although inspection under ultraviolet light reveals that the signature “Muhammad Hasan” in the mid-left field on the present portrait has been added at a later date, the attribution is convincing, especially in its similarity to other portraits accredited to the artist. Qajar artists are known to have produced numerous portraits of single sitters, and it is likely that Muhammad Hasan would have painted several portraits in a similar style. Another possibility is that the artist may have produced a series of portraits depicting the same sitter, as with the dual portrait of a harem girl in the collection of Sir Gore Ouseley, Ambassador to the Persian court and founder of the Royal Asiatic Society, and acquired directly from a Persian artist in the early nineteenth century (Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, no.57 p.206). The painting displays two almost identical maidens within the same interior that is divided into separate fields by the suggestion of a border at the centre of the canvas, causing Falk to speculate that the canvas is likely to have been cut down from a larger panel (Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, no.57 p.206). This separation, combined with the unadorned canvas that extends beyond the margin of the portrait’s background, suggests that artists may have worked on large canvases producing a series of similar portraits.

Portraits of maidens and entertainers were often placed in niches as decorative features within a palace, and it is tempting to suggest that an arcade may have been decorated with several paintings from one series. The painting of two harem girls also proves that artists produced multiple versions of certain popular subjects.

Further reading: Royal Persian Paintings: the Qajar Epoch 1785-1925: Two Hundred Years of Painting from the Royal Persian Courts by Layla Diba.

Provenance: Acquired by the current vendor from Gordian Weber Kunsthandel, Germany. Acquired from the above 21st October 2015