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Lot Essay
The elongated and strained pose of the musician in this painting echoes the tension of the strings of the ektar which he plays in the middle of a wilderness. When Stuart Cary Welch published this painting, he attributed this figure, like that of the previous lot, to Mirza Ali’s time spent in Sabzavar with his exiled patron Ibrahim Mirza. Certainly, there are similarities in the pose of the figure in our painting to that of the woman reading in the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, mentioned in the note to the previous lot (acc.no.14.593). Sheila Canby also highlights that the fur collar of the lady receives a similar treatment to the upturned fur hat worn by our musician.
Other comparable figures include two paintings in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. In the first, a kneeling young man apparently presents a sheet of paper to someone standing out of the frame (acc.no.MS.42.2007). His back is tense and his belly protrudes as he leans backwards and looks up. The second painting is a seated woman reading from a manuscript (acc.no.MS.598.2007). Though she is a more rotund figure, as she looks down to the page her head tilts forward and neck extends in a way typical of Mirza Ali’s subjects, including our musician.
There exists a double-page composition depicting a hunting party, which was attributed to Mirza Ali by Stuart Cary Welch, and which is today split between the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no.12.223.1) and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (14.624). Though these are busier scenes, the golden sky, the lush oasis ground, and the blocks of blue-grey rocky scree echo that of the present lot. Moreover, at the bottom of the Boston folio is a figure engaged in cooking a goose, who has the same part-shaved head and fur hat as our figure. Though Stuart Cary Welch suggests that both this composition and our painting were executed in Sabzavar after 1570, Canby argues that similarities to other paintings – such as the garden party from the Divan of Ibrahim Mirza which is dated to 1582 and is now in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (acc.no.AKM282.86) - indicate that both paintings were executed by Mirza Ali in Qazvin, after Ibrahim Mirza’s return from exile (Canby 1998, p.64).
Other comparable figures include two paintings in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. In the first, a kneeling young man apparently presents a sheet of paper to someone standing out of the frame (acc.no.MS.42.2007). His back is tense and his belly protrudes as he leans backwards and looks up. The second painting is a seated woman reading from a manuscript (acc.no.MS.598.2007). Though she is a more rotund figure, as she looks down to the page her head tilts forward and neck extends in a way typical of Mirza Ali’s subjects, including our musician.
There exists a double-page composition depicting a hunting party, which was attributed to Mirza Ali by Stuart Cary Welch, and which is today split between the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no.12.223.1) and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (14.624). Though these are busier scenes, the golden sky, the lush oasis ground, and the blocks of blue-grey rocky scree echo that of the present lot. Moreover, at the bottom of the Boston folio is a figure engaged in cooking a goose, who has the same part-shaved head and fur hat as our figure. Though Stuart Cary Welch suggests that both this composition and our painting were executed in Sabzavar after 1570, Canby argues that similarities to other paintings – such as the garden party from the Divan of Ibrahim Mirza which is dated to 1582 and is now in the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (acc.no.AKM282.86) - indicate that both paintings were executed by Mirza Ali in Qazvin, after Ibrahim Mirza’s return from exile (Canby 1998, p.64).