QAJAR IRAN, 19TH CENTURY

The drum played by this lady is a tonbak, a classic form of Iranian traditional drum. It is usually held more horizontally – our drummer here holds it at an unusually jaunty downward angle.  This is a rare subject to find, although there is another female tonbak player, by a very different artist but wearing a similar hat, in the Shalva Amiranashvili State Art Museum of Georgia (inv.no.OD 859; Irina Koshoridze and Marina Friedman, Qajar Portraits, Tiblisi, 2004, no.3).  
 
The really unusual feature of this painting is however the background.  The artist does not seem to have worked out whether the drummer is drumming inside or out.  The architectural interior elements of a normal painting are all there, but all painted such that the interior and exterior are visually almost blending together. Maybe, in a most atypical Iranian interior, the lower wall is painted with a trompe l’oeil landscape.