Moʿin Moṣavver | Individual Drawings and Paintings

Painting 1676.1


A Lion and His Keeper


Location: New York, Private Collection. Formerly in the Engel-Gros Collection, Paris
Sotheby's states that this painting was given to the geographer Petermann by Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in 1855.
Painting: (h x W) 21.3 x 13.0 cm.
Signature: Signed and dated 1086/1676.


Inscription
On the doorway near the right border: dar ruz-e do šanba 3 šahr-e ẕu˘l-ḥejja al-ḥarām sana 1086 bejehat-e moraqqā¯ ba etmām rasid. mobārak bād. mašqa alʿbid al-faqir moʿin-e moṣavver . . . {unintelligible].
Translation: “Completed for an album on Monday the third of the holy month of Ẕu˘l-ḥejja in the year 1086/18 February 1676. May he be blessed. Drawn by the poor slave Moʿin Moṣavver. [May God forgive his sins?]”. The inscription is in the handwriting of Moʿin. The date was actually a Tuesday, not a Monday.

Description:
A young man with a moustache stands in the upper left, dressed in a light green coat trimmed with gold and bound with a jewelled belt and dagger, a pink undershirt, gray pants, light blue stockings, and a white turban wound around a gold kolāh on his head. He gazes downward to the right while holding a chain of large silver links, the other end of which is attached to a large lion. The lion is seated, with its mouth open and gazing toward the right. The backdrop consists of an arched gray doorway on the right, which is surrounded by a fresco of birds and foliage rendered in blue on a cream colored ground, alongside and above which are rows of buff colored tiles.

Bibliography:
Ganz, Engel-Gros_1925, p.69.
Sotheby sale catalog (NY), 12/10/81, Lot 138.

Commentary:
This painting is a superb example of Moʿin’s daring use of color, whereby he combines rich, intense, seemingly garrish hues in such a way that they never exceed the limits of good taste. It is also an excellent example of Moʿin’s continuous interest in animals, particularly the ferocious quality within them. Other, quite comparable examples of lions in Mo¯in’s work: 1672.2, 1677.1, and 1692.1, as well as in Ms. F, no. 6-410 and Ms. G, f.338. The moustachioed man is almost the hallmark of the Moʿin style, and the signed and dated inscription confirms what is already quite evident visually.

Sothebys (London) 22 April 1999 lot 47, and again 12 October 2000 lot 74, illustrates a second version of this work that is slightly smaller and "sketchier". The inscription is word for word identical including the date, but the subject is a mirror image of the painting under consideration. Sotheby opines that the variant was probably a copy by a follower, and included the inscription as an honorific reference to the master. That is the most likely conclusion, but at the same time we should not close our eyes to the possibility that it might be a preliminary sketch by Moʿin.

Photo after Sothebys.

Robert Eng

Last Updated: November 14, 2018 | Originally published: November 14, 2018