Revealing the Unseen: New Perspectives on Qajar Art

by Melanie Gibson (Editor), Gwenaëlle Fellinger (Editor), Ali Boozari (Contribution by), Filiz Çakir Phillip (Contribution by), Layla S. Diba (Contribution by)

Overview

Collected articles on Iranian art from the Qajar dynasty.

The thirteen articles in this volume were originally given as presentations at the symposium of the same name organized in June 2018 by the Musée du Louvre and the Musée du Louvre-Lens in conjunction with the exhibition The Empire of Roses: Masterpieces of 19th Century Persian Art. The exhibition explored the art of Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while the nation was under the rule of the Qajar dynasty. The symposium set out to present research on previously unknown and unpublished objects from this rich period of art history.
 
This volume, published with the Louvre Museum in France, is divided into four sections. The first, “Transitions and Transmissions,” is dedicated to the arts of painting, illumination, and lithography. The focus of the second section, entitled “The Image Revealed,” also considers works on paper, looking at new themes and techniques. “The Material World” examines the use of materials such as textiles, carpets, and armor. The articles in the final section discuss the history of two groups of artifacts acquired by their respective museums.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909942646
Publisher:	Gingko
Publication date:	02/18/2022
Series:	Art Series
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Melanie Gibson is senior editor of the Gingko Library Art Series.


 Gwenaëlle Fellinger is a senior curator in the Department of Islamic Art in the Louvre Museum, where she is in charge of the arts of the Qajar era, the Islamic West, textiles and carpets, and conservation. In 2018 she curated The Empire of Roses: Masterpieces of 19th Century Persian Art.


Layla S. Diba is an independent art advisor, scholar and curator specializing in the art of 19th and 20th century Iran. She has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Negarestan Museum of 18th and 19th century Iranian Art in Tehran from 1975-78 and the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s Curator of Islamic Art from 1990-2000 where she organized the exhibition Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch (1785-1925) and edited and coauthored the accompanying publication. In 2013 she cocurated the exhibition Iran Modern at Asia Society Museum in New York and coedited the accompanying catalogue. She has written widely on Persian and Islamic Art and her current projects include the publication of Art in Peril: The Case of the Negarestan Museum and its Collections of 18th and 19th century Iranian Art.
 

Maryam Ekhtiar is curator in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She began working at the museum in 2003 as a specialist in the field of nineteenth-century Persian art and culture, calligraphy, and later Persian painting. She received her PhD from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at New York University in 1994 and has worked and taught at various museums and universities. She worked closely with Layla Diba at the Brooklyn Museum on the ground-breaking 1998 exhibition, Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch 1785‒1925, and was coeditor of the accompanying catalogue.
 

 Gwenaëlle Fellinger is a senior curator in the Department of Islamic Art in the Louvre Museum, where she is in charge of the arts of the Qajar era, the Islamic West, textiles and carpets, and conservation. In 2018 she curated The Empire of Roses: Masterpieces of 19th Century Persian Art.


Christiane Gruber is associate professor of Islamic art in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her latest publications are her third monograph The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images and her edited volume The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World.
 


Carol Guillaume graduated in comparative literature and art history. An independent researcher and lecturer at the École du Louvre, she has collaborated on several exhibitions and events on Qajar art, including L’Empire des roses. Chefs-d’oeuvre de l’art persan du XIXe siècle, held at Louvre-Lens in 2018.
 


Charlotte Maury was trained in art history at the Ecole du Louvre and Paris IV-Sorbonne, and studied Persian and Turkish at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. Since 2007 she has been in charge of the collections of Turkish and Ottoman art, and of the arts of the book from Iran and India, in the department of Islamic art at the Louvre Museum. She has collaborated on several exhibitions organized by the department. She is currently conducting research on albums and manuscript pages in the Louvre collection in collaboration with the C2RMF laboratory.
 


Tim Stanley is senior curator for the Middle Eastern collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. He joined the Museum in 2002 and his first project was the travelling exhibition Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria and Albert Museum (2004-6). His most recent has been the exhibition Epic Iran (2021). He has been a lead curator on major gallery redevelopments, and he established the Jameel Prize, a triennial international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition that is now in its sixth cycle (2021). Tim has a strong research interest in the arts of the book and in decorative arts, especially Iranian lacquer.
 


Iván Szántó is chair of the Department of Iranian Studies at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. His primary research interests concentrate on the arts of Islamic Iran, especially the Safavid and Qajar periods, as well as their connections with Central and Eastern Europe. He authored and edited several books on the subject, including Safavid Art and Hungary: The Esterházy Appliqué in Context.
 


Daria Vasilyeva is senior curator at the State Museum Hermitage, Saint-Petersburg. Since 2005 she has worked in the Oriental Department of the State Hermitage Museum and currently holds the position of curator of Iranian textile collection and head of Byzantium and the Middle East Section in the Oriental Department. She is the author of about twenty articles and essays.


Friederike Voigt is principal curator of the Middle Eastern and South Asian collections at National Museums Scotland. She holds a master’s degree in Iranian studies, art history and sociology from Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research focuses on the role of crafts in Iranian society, including the relationship between craft production and Iran’s encounter of modernity, ideas of learning and the mutual influence of technical advancement and aesthetic developments. She is interested in collecting practices and networks and develops alternative positions for interpreting and engaging with historical collections.
 

Table of Contents

Foreword by Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali
Prologue by Marie Lavandier and Yannick Lintz
Introduction by Gwenaëlle Fellinger

Charlotte Maury and Carol Guillaume, A first overview of Golestan 1644: album making, connoisseurship, and the carol guillaume painter Muhammad Baqir

Simon Rettig Illustrating Firdawsi’s Book of Kings in the Early Qajar Era: The Case of the Ezzat-Malek Soudavar Shāhnama

Tim stanley Razi Taliqani and the ‘Lustre of the Nation’, 1880s to 1900s

Ali boozari Mirza Hassan bin Aqa Seyyed Mirza Isfahani: A Bridge Between Elite and Popular Art in the Qajar Period

Maryam Ekhtiar, Ahl al-Bayt Imagery Revisited: A Drawing by Isma'il Jalayir at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Christiane Gruber, Without Pen, Without Ink: Fingernail Art in the Qajar Period

Layla S. Diba, Towards an Alternative Art History: Qajar Photography and Contemporary Iranian Art

Gwenaëlle Fellinger, Shimmering Mirages—Nineteenth-Century Ikat Velvets

Hadi Maktabi, Carpets as Diplomatic Gifts and Feudal Tribute under the Qajars

Friedericke Voigt, Equestrian Tiles and the Re-discovery of Underglaze Painting in Qajar Iran

Filiz Cakir Phillip, Chahar Ayna: Form, Function, and Decoration of an Enigmatic Iranian Armour

Daria Vasilyeva, On Iranian Diplomatic Gifts and Trophies of the 1820s in The State Hermitage Museum: Archival Documents and Historical Context

Iván Szántó, Pearls of Qajar Painting Strung at Random in Eastern Europe

Epilogue by Layla S. Diba, Looking Anew: Qajar Art in the Twenty-first Century

Editorial Reviews

Beautifully presented, this new book expands the current scholarship on Qajar art in many valuable directions.

Moya Carey