AlbumsPersian18th-19th century

An Album of Persian Paintings and Drawings

18th-19th century

Description

This album is bound in folding or accordion format, with 20 folios, or 40 pages, containing Persian sketches and paintings. The majority of the works are rendered in black or red pigment, but a few are in full color. For the most part each page bears a single work, framed with decorative borders, but on a few pages, up to four different items have been fitted together. There are a variety of inscriptions—sometimes on the work of art and sometimes on the page backing—that name Persian artists active from the eighteenth through mid-nineteenth century, e.g., Mirza Baba (fl. 1785-1830), Muḥammad ‘Alī (son of Muhammad Zaman), Muhammad Baqir, Muhammad Hadi, Muhammad Hasan Afshar, and Muhammad Zaman (signed Ya Sahib al-Zaman) (fl. 1650-94). The album is dominated by botanical studies, but the contents also include animals and human figures. One work of art is non-Persian: a late Mughal painting of a semi-nude woman holding a lotus and enclosed in a crescent.

Classification

Albums

Medium

Ink and colors on paper; leather and gold binding

Culture

Persian

Century

18th-19th century

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Department

Department of Islamic & Later Indian Art

Dimensions

30 x 20 cm (11 13/16 x 7 7/8 in.)

Provenance

Ezzat-Malek Soudavar, Geneva, Switzerland (by 2014), by descent; to her son Abolala Soudavar, Houston, Texas (2014), loan; to Harvard Art Museums, 2015. Note: Ezzat-Malek Soudavar (1913-2014) formed this collection over a period of sixty years. She purchased the works of art on the international art market.