拍品专文
Muhammad Qasim was a contemporary of Riza-i 'Abbasi, active during the reign of Shah 'Abbas I. Two paintings of his, one in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, the other in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, are illustrated in B.W. Robinson, Persian Paintings: From the 14th through the 19th Century, Boston and Toronto, 1965, pls.62 and 63, pp.90-91; and two more are in Abolola Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, New York, 1992, pls.120-21, p.293. Both Robinson and Soudavar date the paintings to around the 1650s, but more recent research by Adel Adamova has convincingly repositioned his works to the early 17th century, presented in a paper given at a conference in Edinburgh, 1998. This paints Muhammad Qasim in a completely different light - innovative rather than derivative, and as a contemporary rather than a pupil of Riza and thus much more influential to the course that Persian painting took in the 17th century.