PORTRAIT OF A HAREM GIRL, ATTRIBUTED TO MUHAMMAD HASAN, QAJAR, PERSIA, CIRCA 1810-1830

A closely comparable painting to this charming portrait also attributed to Muhammad Hasan can be found in the State Museum of Fine Arts in Tiflis (see Falk 1972, fig. 17, p.43) and shows a similarly attired maiden kneeling upon a carpet and wearing a dress with a scalloped neck embroidered with roses, and wide-legged trousers with the same scrolling motif. She is clasping a mirror and a jewelled hair ornament, and the painting is executed in the same sweet style as the present portrait. Although inspection under ultraviolet light reveals that the signature "Muhammad Hasan" in the mid-left field on the present portrait has been added at a later date, the attribution is convincing, especially in its similarity to other portraits accredited to the artist.

Qajar artists are known to have produced numerous portraits of single sitters, and it is likely that Muhammad Hasan would have painted several portraits in a similar style. Another possibility is that the artist may have produced a series of portraits depicting the same sitter, as with the dual portrait of a harem girl in the collection of Sir Gore Ouseley, Ambassador to the Persian court and founder of the Royal Asiatic Society, and acquired directly from a Persian artist in the early nineteenth century (Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, no.57 p.206). The painting displays two almost identical maidens within the same interior that is divided into separate fields by the suggestion of a border at the centre of the canvas, causing Falk to speculate that the canvas is likely to have been cut down from a larger panel (Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, no.57 p.206). This separation, combined with the unadorned canvas that extends beyond the margin of the portrait's background, suggests that artists may have worked on large canvases producing a series of similar portraits. Portraits of maidens and entertainers were often placed in niches as decorative features within a palace, and it is tempting to suggest that an arcade may have been decorated with several paintings from one series. The painting of two harem girls also proves that artists produced multiple versions of certain popular subjects.

The artist Muhammad Hasan was active during the second half of Fath 'Ali's reign, and the first part of Muhammad Shah's reign. He was noted for producing elegant and sensuous paintings of young women such as the present example, and Falk described his pictures as having great charm and a lightness of touch, especially when the sitter was female (Falk 1972, p.42). Here the artist has conveyed the sensuous aspects of the portrait both overtly through the maiden's diaphanous shirt, and subtly through her pretty face and languid yet appraising eyes.

The sitter's characterisation as a harem girl is based on the nature of her clothing: the jewelled hair ornaments, transparent shirt and wide-legged trousers that are in evidence in the present example can also be seen in other paintings of harem girls and was their traditional attire. The other decorative features of the background such as the floral carpet and fruit before an arched window are typical of contemporary portraiture and are recurrent elements in many Qajar oil paintings.

A portrait attributed to Muhammad Hasan was sold through these rooms: The Collection of the Berkeley Trust, 12 October 2004, lot 24. For a discussion of the Qajar portraiture of entertainers see the following lot in this sale. A number of works by Muhammad Hasan have survived in museums and private collections, and are reproduced in Diba and Ekhtiar 1993, no.27a, p.80; no.29a, p.84; no.42, p.187-188; no.47, p.194-195 and no.58, p.208.