File:A European lady, signed 'Ali Quli Jabbadar, Safavid Qazvin, dated 1664-65.jpg

English: A EUROPEAN LADY

SIGNED 'ALI QULI JIBBADAR, SAFAVID QAZVIN, DATED AH 1075/1664-65 AD

Gouache heightened with gold on paper, a European lady holding a basket of fruit and a glass of wine stands before a rich velvet drape and a European landscape in which a male figure is out hunting with a dog, signed and dated below in black nasta'liq, set inside three margins each with scrolling gilt vegetal and floral vine margins on polychrome ground, reverse with description of the painting in French in a 19th century hand Painting 5½ x 3½in. (14 x 9cm.); folio 10¾ x 8¼in. (27.5 x 21cm.)

The inscription beneath this painting reads, bi tarikh-e shahr-e rajab-e morajjab 1075 dar dar al-sultana qazvin surat-e etmam yaft raqam-e 'ali quli jibbadar, 'It was completed in the month of Rajab al-murajjab 1075 in the Dar al-Sultana Qazvin, drawing of 'Ali Quli Jibbadar'.

Very little is known of the life of Ali Quli Jibbadar. We can be sure that he was official court painter to Shah Sulayman (r.1666-1694) from the paintings that are in the St Petersburg Muraqqa (Francesca von Habsburg, Yury A. Petrosyan, Stuart Cary Welch, Anatoly Ivanov and Oleg Akamushkin, The St. Petersburg Muraqqa, Lugano and Milan 1996, f.98, pl.173 and f.99, pl.191). When discussing this artist in relation to his work in the St. Petersburg Muraqqa, Ivanov notes that he can be identified with the Ali Quli Beg Farangi noted by the author Lutf 'Ali Beg Isfahani in his book written between 1760 and 1779 as having been born a Christian who had then taken up Islam (op.cit.p.36). He is also known to have signed with the epithet Arna'ut, the Ottoman name for Albania, indicating his probable origin (Akamushkin, quoted by Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts, New York, 1992, p.369). His signature can also include the epithet Gholam-zade-ye qadimi (son of a long-term slave of the king) indicating that it was his father's service at the Safavid court which had brought him to Iran (Soudavar, op.cit. p.369).

His artistic output makes clear his interest in a wide variety of art. He copied a number of Indian miniatures, in very different styles, for instance two versions of a scene attributable to Payag in the St. Petersburg Muraqqa (op.cit.f.52, pl.41) which, as Cary Welch notes are full of Sturm und Drang. In apparent contrast he also painted a poor Indian water-carrier which has almost the clarity of a late Company School painting (sold Laurin, Guilloux, Buffetaud and Tailleur, Art Islamique, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 23 June 1982, lot 12). He was equally interested in European painting, the subject often derived from prints (Soudavar op.cit., no.148, pp.369-70). Although we have not been able to identify the precise European origin of the present subject, it is almost certain that it was based on a specific prototype. Another painting, of a French Prince, is taken from a work by Philippe de Champagne (F.R.Martin, The Miniature Paintings and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey, London, 1968 reprint, pl.172a, in the author's collection). A further painting, in the Davis Album in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a portrait of the Russian Ambassador, Prince Andrey Priklonskiy, was executed only a year before ours, further demonstrating his very strong interest in single-figure European subjects at this period in his career (https://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/140005722? rpp=20&pg=1&rndkey=20120813&ft=*&deptids=14&who=7Ali+Quli+Jabbadar&po s=1). He, like his contemporary Muhammad Zaman, synthesised the styles they encountered and became the leading exponents of an Isfahan style that ultimately was the basis on which almost all painting of the Zand and Qajar periods were based. Their variety of style and openness to outside influence is all the more remarkable when one considers that they were working at the same time as Mu'in Musavvar, Muhammad Yusuf, and Afzal and Muhammad 'Ali who continued their successful careers very much working in the tradition that Reza 'Abbasi had created well over fifty years earlier.

The present painting is extremely close in style to a further example in the St.Petersburg Muraqqa, (op.cit., f.93r, pl.48). That scene is more complicated, but as Ivanov explains in his note, it is composite from more than one original painting. The lower part is the element that is of greatest interest to us in our study of the present work. It is of three European figures, the left hand one of which is remarkably similar to ours. Ours could be the same lady, or her slightly prettier sister, with hair slightly differently arranged, and holding different attributes, but with almost identical clothing especially the lace collar. Until the appearance of our painting the St Petersburg one was the only example indisputably by this artist which said clearly where and when it was executed "Executed in the Prosperous and Victorious month of Safar in the capital city of Qazvin. Written by the most worthless of the slaves of the court, 'Ali Quli Jabbadar. Year 1085" (op.cit.pp.65-66). This is a strikingly similar inscription to that on the present painting, written in the same hand in a band below the painting, with the same amount of detail, written a mere month earlier. This thus is a major addition to the oeuvre of this hugely important artist.