Moses before the burning bush, by Hossein Behzad, Paris or Tehran, circa 1930
Auction Closed
October 25, 04:59 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
ink and gouache heightened with gold on paper, 4 lines to the page above the painting written in nasta'liq in black ink, ruled in gold and polychrome, within gold margins with animals and mythical creatures in chase, recto with 23 lines to the page in black nasta'liq, a key phrase picked out in red, within gold margins decorated with floral vines
text panel: 32.7 by 20.7cm.
leaf: 45.1 by 30.4cm.
Hossein Behzad (d.1968) moved to Paris in 1934 where he stayed a little over a year to study different schools of painting. It was during his residency in France that he developed a new style of miniature painting, integrating the traditional style of the masters of Safavid painting in a contemporary context. His works have been exhibited globally, including Iran (in the Iran Bastan Museum, 1953 on the occasion of the millennium of Ibn Sina); France (the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 1955); The United States of America (the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 1956), and Finland (the Olympic Painting Exhibition, Helsinki, 1952).
Further folios from this manuscript were published in 1997 in a special edition of Dossier de l’Art dedicated to Persian painting, (Dossier de l’Art, La Peinture Persane, no.36, March 1997, pp.7, 70, 72, 73). Others were sold at Christie’s London, 11 October 2005, lot 139; 31 October 2007, lot 73 and lot 74 and 27 April 2017, lot 134, and two further illustrations were recently sold in these rooms, 23 October 2019, lot 172 and 10 June 2020, lot 65.
