Female dancers with musicians in a meadow outside the walls of a town

Qajar Persia, by a follower of Isma'il Jalayir, late 19th Century

Footnotes

Provenance
Formerly with Le Vieux Chalet, Fonds Robert-Philippe Federici, Montmartre, Paris, until 2024.

The artist Isma'il Jalayir was also a teacher at the School of Arts of the Dar al-Funun, the academy established in Tehran in 1851 by Nasir al-Din Shah (the School of Arts was established in 1861). His works stand out in Qajar art for their delicacy and for a certain enigmatic quality. He became a favourite of Nasir al-Din Shah and other senior figures in the Qajar court.

B. W. Robinson commented thus on Jalayir's painting:'his style was meticulous, thoroughly Europeanised on the surface, but fundamentally Persian, and tinged with a sort of gentle melancholy'. (Robinson 1991, p. 887).

The composition in our painting is reminiscent of the painting depicting ladies gathered around a samovar in the Victoria and Albert Museum (P.56-1941), dated to the third quarter of the 19th Century (discussed in L. Diba (ed.), Royal Persian Paintings: the Qajar Epoch 1785-1925, New York 1999, pp. 261-262, no. 86). See also his painting of Nur 'Ali Shah (circa 1865, Diba, no. 85), which features the same grey-green flowers and plants.

Other particularly relevant examples of Jalayir's work in which such features appear include:
Christie's, Islamic Art and Manuscripts, 29th April 2003, lot 185, an equestrian portrait of Nasr al-Din Shah, signed, dated to the mid-19th Century, in which appear, in the foreground, the studies of plants and flowers in the characteristic mint green seen in our painting; and then the curious, mysterious faded domed and arcaded buildings seen here.
Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World, 11th October 2006, lot 55, a portrait of Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Amin al-Mulk, attributed to the artist, circa 1883 - in which the sitter is flanked by trees with precisely painted and almost bottle-green leaves, as well as a pavilion in the background with rising arcades.
Sotheby's, Arts of the Islamic World, 25th October 2017, lot 127, a portrait of the same sitter as the above example, signed by the artist, circa 1880 - the background of which has the same green, yet somehow elegiacally faded trees and plants, and the brownish-white domed buildings lurk amid the trees in the far distance.

For further discussion see T. Falk (ed.), Treasures of Islam, Geneva 1985, pp. 190-191; and the landscape and vegetation in the calligraphic composition in Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, circa 1860-70 (AKM534), illustrated in G. Fellinger (ed.), L'Empire des Roses: chefs-d'oeuvre de l'art persan du XIX siecle, Lens 2018, p. 243, no. 236.

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