Enrica Medugno
Sale Coordinator
A collection of Qajar tile Panels
Lot 48R,TP
A Qajar cuerda seca pottery tile panel depicting an assembly of Shah 'Abbas with dancers and musicians Persia, 19th Century
Amended
14 November 2023, 11:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£3,000 - £5,000
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Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
A Qajar cuerda seca pottery tile panel depicting an assembly of Shah 'Abbas with dancers and musicians
Persia, 19th Century
Persia, 19th Century
of rectangular form, comprising twenty-four tiles decorated in polychrome on a white ground with a feast scene depicting the ruler encircled by seated courtiers and serving vessels with drinks and fruit, the foreground with musicians and dancers, the scene enclosed within a lobed cartouche-shaped panel, quatrefoil motifs containing inscriptions and lobed vegetal motifs at the four corners, the interstices with scrolling foliate and palmette designs, the border with a scrolling split-palmette vine design, framed
each tile 25 x 24.5 cm.; the frame 105 x 155 cm.
each tile 25 x 24.5 cm.; the frame 105 x 155 cm.
Footnotes
Provenance
Formerly in situ in the summer residence of Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster (1879-1953), Isle of Wight, UK. Believed to have been acquired in Persia by an earlier resident in the early 20th century.
Private UK collection.
Inscriptions: the repeat of, 'The assembly of Shah 'Abbas, the work of Muhammad (? Majid ?).'
Scenes of royal feasting and assemblies, particularly those that resembled earlier Safavid counterparts such as the murals of lavish assemblies hosted by Shah 'Abbas I, Shah 'Abbas II, and Shah Tahmasp in the Chehel Sotun, featured prominently in Qajar paintings, tiles, and lacquer. The Qajar dynasty promoted themselves as the rightful heirs to the Safavid empire, as the Qajar tribes had supported the Safavid rulers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Layla S. Diba, 'Images of Power and the Power of Images: Intention and Response in Early Qajar Painting (1785-1834)', in Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785-1925, eds. Layla Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar, New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998, p. 33). Safavid-style imagery and references to the great Safavid kings were therefore thoroughly integrated into the visual culture of 19th Century Qajar Persia. One of the most famous examples of this 19th Century 'Safavid Revival' movement is a painted chest at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, which features the court of Shah 'Abbas I on the lid, alongside scenes from Firdausi's Shahnama and Nizami's Khamsa (J 4655).
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