SAFAVID HERAT, CIRCA 1580-90

Details

A SQUATTING DERVISH
SAFAVID HERAT, CIRCA 1580-90
Pen and ink with gouache on paper, a white robed dervish holds a small bowl in the one hand, with the other he indicates a blue and white bowl and a metal ewer, around them a rocky landscape with a stream flowing in the background, laid down on later gold and polychrome scrolling floral margins
Painting 4½ x 2½in. (11.1 x 6.1cm.); folio 14 3/8 x 9½in. (36.3 x 24.2cm.)

Provenance

Rothschild Collection, sold, Colnaghi, Persian and Mughal Art, London, 1976, no.22

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Lot Essay

A painting depicting a gathering of dervishes in the Oriental Institute in St. Petersburg attributed by Eleanor Sims to Herat circa 1580-90 AD shares many features with our present painting (Inv. D-181, Fol. 36r.; Eleanor Sims, Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources, Hong Kong, 2002, No. 176, p. 260). The St. Petersburg painting has a squatting dervish with a conical hat and hooked nose which very closely resembles the figure in our painting. Sims noted the different styles of headgear - Indian, Central Asian and Iranian in the St. Petersburg painting and interpreted this as a sign that it was produced in a geographical crossroad such as Herat. A ewer of Indian shape is depicted in the lower left hand corner of our painting which suggests that it was similarly executed in a cross-cultural environment.

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