A stag in flight, pursued by a mounted hunter, signed by the artist Fursat al-Shirazi

Qajar Persia, dated AH 1296/AD 1878-79

Footnotes

Provenance
Formerly in the Khayami Collection (Inv. no. EDN185).

Published
Marcus Fraser, The Khayami Collection of Islamic Art, 2008, p. 85, no. 100.

The inscription reads: 'This shot hunt was made for Mirza Fazlullah during the White Nights of the first hijri month, the year 1296/7th-9th January 1879', and is signed Nasir al-Husayni Fursat al-Shirazi.

'White Nights' are the period when the moon is brightest (i.e. full moon).

Fursat al-Shirazi, also known as Fursat al-Dawla (1854-1920), was a poet and scholar as well as a painter. His father, Mirza Ja'afar Bakhjat (1806-79) was also a painter and manuscript illuminator. Fursat al-Shirazi was particularly known as a topographical painter, for which purpose he travelled throughout Persia, and it is possible that our painting derives from these journeys.

The dedicatee Mirza Fazlullah is likely to be the nasta'liq and shikasteh calligrapher (d. AH 1310/AD 1892-93), who is referred to as deceased in Athar-e 'Ajam at the time of its publication in AH 1313/AD 1895-96. See Mehdi Bayani, ahval va athar-e khoshnevisan, vol. 2, Tehran 1346 sh, pp. 573-574; and Forsat al-Dawleh Shirazi, Athar-e 'Ajam, 1362, pp. 545-546.

Karimzadeh includes signed items by him (including a piece in the Firuz Collection), maps of cities, villages and stopping places between Shiraz and Tehran, watercolour painting as well as a lacquered pen box. These are dated between AH 1296/AD 1878-79 and AH 1336/AD 1917-18. See Mohammad Ali Karimzadeh Tabrizi, The Lives & Art of Old Painters of Iran, vol. 3, London 1991, pp. 1092-1093.

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