.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Stylistically this fine miniature relates closely to a small group. One recently exhibited in the Harem exhibition is in the Topkapi Palace Museum (2135.26a; Alev Taskin (ed.), Harem. House of the Sultan, exhibition catalogue, Istanbul, 2012, no.20, pp.108-109), another was in the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection and two have come through the salerooms - one sold at Sotheby's, 13 October 1989, lot 57 and another more recently in these Rooms, 4 October 2012, lot 47.
So similar are the five that it seems likely that they are in the hand of the same artist, or at least by two artists familiar with each other's work (Edwin Binney 3rd, Turkish Miniature Paintings and Manuscripts from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1973, no.14, pp.52-53). In four of the works, including ours, the Binney drawing and the two that have appeared at auction, the ladies wear long dark fur lined coats and hold in their hands large roses in full bloom with dark shaded leaves. The same four also have extremely similar foliage behind the ladies in each case is similarly drawn, with flowering prunus blossoms.
The Binney miniature was previously in the collections of F.R.Martin, Sevadjian and Jean Pozzi. When first published by Martin, he saw it as Timurid, mid 15th century and attributed it to the painter 'Véli-Djan' (F.R. Martin, The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey from the 8th to the 18th Century, vol. I, London, 1912, fig.19, p.32). Stchoukine, in La Peinture turque wrote that Vali Jan, whilst originally from Tabriz and a student of the Safavid master Siyavush Beg, was transferred to the Imperial ateliers in Constantinople (Ivan Stchoukine, La Peinture turque, vol.I, Paris, 1966, p.34). Meredith-Owens also talks of Vali Jan, mentioning that he produced slightly coloured drawings of huris, or maidens of the Islamic paradise (G.M. Meredith-Owens, Turkish Miniatures, London, 1963, p.20).
So similar are the five that it seems likely that they are in the hand of the same artist, or at least by two artists familiar with each other's work (Edwin Binney 3rd, Turkish Miniature Paintings and Manuscripts from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1973, no.14, pp.52-53). In four of the works, including ours, the Binney drawing and the two that have appeared at auction, the ladies wear long dark fur lined coats and hold in their hands large roses in full bloom with dark shaded leaves. The same four also have extremely similar foliage behind the ladies in each case is similarly drawn, with flowering prunus blossoms.
The Binney miniature was previously in the collections of F.R.Martin, Sevadjian and Jean Pozzi. When first published by Martin, he saw it as Timurid, mid 15th century and attributed it to the painter 'Véli-Djan' (F.R. Martin, The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey from the 8th to the 18th Century, vol. I, London, 1912, fig.19, p.32). Stchoukine, in La Peinture turque wrote that Vali Jan, whilst originally from Tabriz and a student of the Safavid master Siyavush Beg, was transferred to the Imperial ateliers in Constantinople (Ivan Stchoukine, La Peinture turque, vol.I, Paris, 1966, p.34). Meredith-Owens also talks of Vali Jan, mentioning that he produced slightly coloured drawings of huris, or maidens of the Islamic paradise (G.M. Meredith-Owens, Turkish Miniatures, London, 1963, p.20).