Page 50 - 2021 April 1, ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs, Christie's London

WHEN HISTORY WAS WRIT LARGE: THE BARTLETT MONUMENTAL
PAINTING OF THE COURT OF FATH ‘ALI SHAH
Essay by Dr. Layla S. Diba

■*30
A MAGNIFICENT QAJAR ROYAL GROUP PORTRAIT
ATTRIBUTABLE TO ‘ABDALLAH KHAN NAQQASHBASHI (ACTIVE
1800-1850), TEHRAN OR ENVIRONS, IRAN, CIRCA 1810-20
Oil heightened with gold on canvas, depicting twenty-four royal courtiers
portrayed in three rows of eight, all standing facing left and wearing lavish
robes and turbans or crowns, each figure identified in white nasta’liq
101 x 174in. (256.5 x 442cm.)
£1,000,000-1,500,000 US$1,500,000-2,100,000
€1,200,000-1,700,000

Sons and Grandsons of Fath Ali Shah. Artist Unknown. Probably
Shiraz, Late 18th – Early 19th Century. 3.20 x 2.50 m. Oil on Canvas.
Possibly Pendant to Oil Panel in Ft. Lauderdale. Original location
Unknown. Formerly Soustiel, Paris. Source: Objets D’Art De L’Islam:
Presentation d’un ensemble d’objets d’art musulman appartenant a
Joseph Soustiel, Jean Soustiel, pg 39-40

INTRODUCTION:
With the appearance of this exceptional and unrecorded work, one of the Also in 1998, a sharp-eyed visitor to the exhibition signalled the existence
great mysteries of Qajar painting can be solved. Over 47 years ago in 1973 of monumental court painting in the Bonnet House Museum and Gardens
a component of the side panels of a monumental tripartite Fath ‘Ali Shah in Fort Lauderdale, the summer residence of the artist and collector
enthronement scene appeared on the market in Paris. Two years later, a Frederic Clay Bartlett. A fourth painting of this group was identified in a
similar work appeared in London and was acquired by the Private Cabinet private European collection in the first decade of the 21th century. Finally, a
of Shahbanou Farah of Iran. The Paris work disappeared into private hands complete cycle of a court painting from the Qom palace of Kay Kaus Mirza,
but the London painting soon reappeared as a centrepiece of the inaugural Fath ‘Ali Shah’s 28th son, has emerged. (Kianoosh Motaqedi “From Chehel
installation of the Negarestan Museum in 1975 where it remained on display Sutun to Golestan Palace: The Evolution of Royal Wall Painting during the
until the closing of the Museum in February 1979 (Soustiel Paris, Objets d’Art Reign of Fath ‘Ali Shah“ in, The Idea of Iran: Iran in Transition to A New World
de L’Islam, 24 July 1973, lot 28, 28-40; Sotheby’s, London, Islamic Works of Order, forthcoming).
Art, 8 April 1975, lot. 183).
Although single portraits were known to collectors and audiences and well-
It was not until 1998 when major battle paintings from the Hermitage documented in the scholarly literature, largely because they were relatively
Museum were shown in the exhibition Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar accessible in European Museums, this was not the case with monumental
Epoch that this genre of Qajar painting was seen by a wide international paintings, which if they had even survived, were stored in Iranian museum
audience. (Layla Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings; The basements. The most important evidence for their significance to the history
Qajar Epoch, New York, 1998, nos. 50-51, pp. 198-201; first published by Ada of Persian painting was first presented in 1963 by the eminent authority on
Adamova, Persian Painting and Drawing of the 15th to 19th Centuries in The Qajar art, B.W. Robinson, who identified 18 paintings based on European travel
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 1996, no 74 and 75, pp. 300-312, no.77, accounts and divided them into three groups: battle, enthronement, and hunting
pp. 314-15). However, monumental enthronement scenes were represented scenes, all with the ruler at the epicentre of the composition. Subsequently, two
by contemporary small-scale copies of the Negarestan palace murals (Fig. 1). enthronement scenes of Aqa Muhammad and Fath ‘Ali Shah in Sulaymanieh
The original tripartite mural had been situated in the Negarestan palace near in Karaj were documented, a major battle painting was located in the Iran-
the Tehran palace complex (Dar al-Khalafeh) and was executed in 1812-13 Bastan Museum and a magnificent hunting scene appeared on the ceiling of
by the court artist ‘Abdallah Khan and his team. (The date and signature the Rashtrapathi Bhawan (President’s Palace) in New Delhi. (B.W. Robinson,
were seen sometime in 1887-88 by E. G. Browne and recorded in his work: “The Court Painters of Fath Ali Shah, Eretz Israel 7, 1964, pp. 94-105; Wolfram
A Year Amongst the Persians, 1893, London, p.96 ; see also Ahmad Suhayli Kleiss and Hubertus Von Gall, Der Qajaren-Pavilion Sulaymanieh in Karaj”,
Khawnsari “The Negarestan Palace and Garden” (in Persian) in Hunar va Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran, 10, 1977, pp. 325-39; Layla S. Diba, “Making
Mardum, 144, 1974, pp. 31-370). The murals were copied by Samsan ibn History: A Monumental Battle Painting of the Perso-Russian Wars”, in Pearls from
Zulfaqar Musavvar al-Mamalik in 1904 but not exhibited until 1917. See Water, Rubies from Stone, Studies in Honor of Priscilla Soucek, Artibus Asiae XVI,
L’Empire des Roses, Gand, 2017, pp. 294-97). The Negarestan palace painting 2, 2006, pp. 97-111 and ibid. ”Qajar Iran and the West: The Rashtrapathi Bhavan
although long since lost, became synonymous with this type. Painting of Fath ‘Ali Shah at the Hunt” in D. Behrens Abu Seif and S. Vernoit, eds.
Islamic Art in the 19th Century, Boston, 2006, pp. 282-302).

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