A group of women & a young boy (Harem), Persia, Qajar era, Qajar art, Circa 1870-90. Watercolour on paper.

Provenance: Adrienne Minassian, New York, 1950s.

This is an interesting and striking image, painted in a style associated with Qajar art of the second half of the 19th century when artists had been sent to Europe to train in western techniques and introduced a new style of painting to the court painters of Nasir al-Din Shah's reign.

This work is almost photographic in manner, with a direct realism that is powerfully rendered, and is reminiscent of the work of Muhammad Ghaffari Kamal al-Mulk.

 This artist was a member of the talented Ghaffari family, who for several generations produced artists of outstanding ability.

 He studied at the Dar al-Funun in Tehran from the tender age of twelve and there was exposed to the western techniques that were fashionable at the time. In the 1870s he was given his own atelier and was appointed naqqash-bashi (painter laureate) in 1880.