Three Qajar Easel Paintings and their Journey from Tehran to Sofia

Szántó, Iván (2017) Three Qajar Easel Paintings and their Journey from Tehran to Sofia. In: Iran and Europe in the Mirror of History (Past, Present, and Future). Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski" - Avangard Prima, Sofia, pp. 94-100. (In Press)

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Abstract

The reserve collections of the National Art Gallery of Bulgaria include three large-scale oil paintings showing full-length depictions of elaborately-dressed personages. One of them holds flowers and a fruit-basket, while the two others are shown playing musical instruments, i. e., daf and santur, respectively. The paintings belong to a genre of Qajar art which has sometimes been conveniently considered as portraiture although these representations are certainly too generic to qualify for true portraits. In fact, we know several related “portraits” from the Qajar period, of which some are still preserved in Iran, while others scattered in international collections. A few of them had reached Eastern and Central Europe as early as the middle of the nineteenth century. While connections between Bulgaria and the Qajar dynasty has been established much before Bulgaria’s declaration of independence in 1908, it seems that the artworks under scrutiny would find their way to Sofia later, in the middle of the twentieth century, reflecting the evolving personal, political, and cultural contacts between the two countries. Questions pertaining the iconography, style, authorship, and provenance of these artefacts will be discussed in this paper.

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