Iran - Imperial art at crossroads
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Imperial art at crossroads as East and West cultures blend
John Russell Taylor
07/02/1999 The Times of London
SYMBOLISM is important in Persian culture. The decision of the Iranian
Government to lend a portrait of a shah to an exhibition in London
would have been unthinkable even six months ago. Now it is seen as yet
another sign of cultural rapprochement between East and West.
The shah in question was of the Qajar dynasty, whose kings rose to
power in Persia 200 years ago. These Turkic-speaking tribal warlords
had lavish courts with splendid feasts and dancing girls. Perhaps to
impress the Western powers, they commissioned oil paintings, shadowless
but full of colour, detail and symbolism.
"This Qajar painting continues to celebrate the traditional themes of
classical Persian painting - royal magnificence, youthful beauty of
both sexes, love of animal forms and the exploits of heroes," says
Basil Robinson, perhaps the best-known authority on Persian art.
Coinciding with a film festival and other cultural events - and with a
growth in tourism to Iran - the best of these Qajar paintings will be
on view in London from next Tuesday under the auspices of the Iran
Heritage Foundation. John Russell Taylor introduces this supplement
with a preview of the show.
There are two mutually contradictory images of Persia that co- exist in
the Western mind. One is that Persia, like Japan, has remained
monumentally unchanged in essence since time immemorial, a model of
cultural continuity. The other sees the country as in an endless
turmoil of change, standing at the crossroads between East and West and
constantly swayed hither and thither by different waves of influence if
not outright invasion.
The truth is not so simple as either alternative. The last ruling
dynasty, the Pahlavi, itself went back only as far as 1925, and any
connection with Kurosh (Cyrus) II, who became first shah in 559BC, was
purely coincidental. Not only that, but the years immediately preceding
the accession of the first Pahlavi, Reza Shah, were uniquely disturbed
by outsiders: the British and the Russians in particular had interests
in the area that they were determined to promote, and by the end of the
19th century most of the Persian elite were educated according to
Western principles. Popular resentment at the increasing encroachment
of the West led to riots in 1891-1892 against the granting of a
monopoly in Persian tobacco to a British company, and in 1907 to the
setting up of a constitutional democracy that was to prove the death-
knell of the Qajar dynasty then in power.
So where does continuity come in? Surprisingly, whoever was in power,
and whatever changes there might be at the top, the broad stream of
Persian culture flows steadily notwithstanding. The Qajar dynasty had
imposed itself on Persia only in 1785, and came from a race of Turkic
tribal warlords who appeared out of nowhere and fought their way to
power in the late 18th century.
But the tradition of Persian Islamic culture continued powerfully to
inform every aspect of Persian life, and the second Qajar monarch, Fath
Ali Shah(1798-1834), had already constructed his court and his life
along fully traditional lines, as though insisting on continuity where
no continuity was.
This is where something approaching a distinctive Qajar art puts in an
appearance. The Royal Persian Paintings in the exhibition at the Brunei
Gallery give a very clear idea of how that came about. The period
covered is the Qajar Epoch, which runs from 1785 to 1925.
The show begins grandly with a resplendent portrait of Fath Ali Shah
from the Hermitage in St Petersburg and the London version of the show
has managed to borrow two fine works by the shah's most important
painter, Mirza Baba, one of them presented to the then Prince Regent,
later George IV, in 1812. Clearly in the two previous centuries Western
had begun to blend with Eastern in the art of Persia, but even in the
1800s the Western seems to be there on sufferance. Sometimes a Western-
looking image is adapted to Eastern techniques, sometimes the other way
round, but in the early Qajar era the combination tends to be a trifle
edgy and unstable.
The most immediate development under Fath Ali Shah is the appearance of
unmistakably Western techniques. Whereas up to this point even the most
strongly Westernised work had continued to be executed in techniques
established under the Mughals (basically opaque watercolour and gilding
on paper), around the beginning of the 19th century paintings in oils
on canvas begin to appear, and by the time the Qajars are fully
established this has become a dominant form.
Clearly this is largely a matter of fashion and status: rulers and
prominent people are by now fully aware of how the Western portrait is
made, particularly as regards scale. It looks impressive; the subjects
are shown in the full panoply of power. The locals want some of that
for themselves and Persian portrait painters move in to supply the
demand.
Of course, there are all sorts of purely political elements in the
picture too. As Julian Raby, who has been in charge of the British
staging of the show, points out, it is not for nothing that the first
section here is entitled The Theatre of Diplomacy.
Fath Ali Shah was very concerned with foreign relations, particularly
with Britain, and was eager to show off the sophistication and
civilisation of his regime for outsiders as well as cutting an
impressive figure at home. This included the typical ploy, readily
recognisable even today in international relations, of exaggerating
victories and minimising defeats.
Immediately following the gallery devoted to Fath Ali Shah comes a
section on the Crown Prince Abbas Mirza and his battles with the
Russians, commemorated by a group of improbably heroic battle scenes -
though actually victory was more or less evenly balanced with defeat.
Some spectacular gold coins are there to tell the alternative tale:
these six enormous pieces were part of a treasure paid to the
triumphant Russians, which allegedly required 1,600 mules to carry it.
In many respects Fath Ali Shah emerges as the hero of the show, or at
any rate the most interesting personality. It seems that he had his
humorous as well as his domineering side. He considered himself
something of a poet, and one day asked a court poet to criticise his
work. The poet (rather boldly) found nothing good to say about Fath
Ali's poems, and not surprisingly found himself banished to the stables.
A little later Fath Ali Shah tried again, with his latest effusions,
and asked "What do you have to say about these?" "Nothing," said the
poet, and turned to leave. "Where are you going?" said Fath Ali
Shah. "Back to the stables," said the poet. The Shah was so delighted
with this answer that he ordered the poet's mouth to be filled with
sweetmeats as a reward.
It is pleasing that an exhibit new to the London show, one of several
key loans from the celebrated Khalili Collection, is Fath Ali's
personal seal, used only on his private letters. It seems to bring this
curious and contradictory man very close.
Artistically, well into the Qajar rule, there are still some curious,
but not unpleasant, jolts. A certain maladroitness in handling the new
medium of oils manifests itself, and this, along with minor problems of
fully adopting Western notions of perspective in place of the flat,
elaborately patterned compositions of the classic Mughal artists,
sometimes gives a smartly primitive air to the painting. Especially
when, as with the series of full-length portraits of the Qajar rulers,
the subject is unmistakably Persian, the technique is unmistakably
Western, and the conventions of pictorial space hover tantalisingly
between the two.
Soon, too, there are direct points of comparison: sometimes we have
works such as Lawrence's 1810 portrait of the first Persian diplomatic
envoy to England, Abu'l Hasan, wearing Persian costume like many of his
contemporaries but seen by a Western artist in a completely different,
much more human light.
Perhaps this is the key difference between the way Western artists saw
the Qajar aristocrats and public figures, and how native Persian
artists saw them: even the strong Western influences cannot banish a
certain hieratic element in Persia itself.
Whether this is the result of respect or fear is difficult to gauge,
but certainly the slightly distanced approach is there even in the
pictures of harem girls showing off their seductive talents, or in
Mirza Baba's depiction (c.1800) of a Tipsy Lady. Enjoying life she may
be, but we do not feel her defences are down sufficiently for us to
receive an insight into her personal character, while we feel we know,
and are intended to know, just what kind of jolly, outgoing man
Lawrence's Abu'l Hasan is.
Even the very latest of the Qajar portraits retain this element of
almost religious formality, whether it is the prettily coloured Nasir
al-Din Shah and a Cannon (the cannon being vibrant blue and his outfit
lilac and avocado against an idealised landscape) or the splendid head-
on image of Imam Quli Khan, where Eastern convention and Western
technique fuse into an image of almost photographic clarity and
precision.
The religious element indeed becomes stronger even as the Westernising
vision becomes, in most respects, more dominant. This movement
simultaneously in opposite directions is encapsulated in the
decorations worn by Qajar monarchs in their portraits. Up to about 1850
each was always seen wearing a portrait miniature of his predecessor;
after 1850 it becomes a miniature of the Prophet Ali, son-in-law of
Muhammad and deeply involved in the beginnings of Shia Islam.
If there is any significant change of balance between the American and
British versions of the show, it would be in the increased emphasis on
the 1870s and 1880s, which were really the watershed in Persian art. In
the 1850s something approaching a Persian version of a European
polytechnic - half military academy, half school of arts - was set up,
and Western influence became more a matter of fundamental training than
of hopeful mimicry. Photography began to seep in as a medium of
portraiture and as an influence on other forms of art. Most of the best
royal photographs are in Iran , but there are some excellent examples
in the show, and fine paintings that show clear traces of the camera's
vision.
The long reign of Nasir al-Din Shah, 1848-1896, emerges as the turning-
point in Persian art as in Persian history, the period when Persia
became a real player on the international scene, and the time when in
many respects Western conventions in everything from dress uniform to
the system of orders began to dominate the state completely. And yet,
the fascination remains that of observing the complex interaction
between East and West. If the Qajar era was a learning curve for
Persian painters, by the end they knew exactly what they were doing,
and did it to perfection.
Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch 1785-1925 at The Brunei
Gallery (SOAS), Thornhaugh Street, London WC1 (0171-323 6230) July 6-
September 30.
Caption: Left: lent by the Queen from her collection at Windsor Castle -
and shown in public for the first time - this miniature manuscript was
given in 1812 to the Prince Regent, later George IV, by Fath Ali Shah,
whose poetry it portrays.|Right: Nasir al-Din Shah and a cannon, circa
1860-70. The cannon symbolised the Shah's military aspirations, and the
medal his religious faith, although in private he led a self-indulgent
life.|Below, right: a portrait of Nasir al- Din Shah, the first loan
from the Iranian Government to Britain since the revolution.|Far right:
Embracing lovers, circa 1770-80. The wine, fruits and sherberts and the
intimacy of the pose speak of the dolce vita of 18th-century Shiraz.
The limbs of the half-smiling lovers combine with the textiles to form
an abstract pattern.
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