Painting of a ladies' tea party

Oil painting was introduced in Iran during the Zand (1750 –79) and Afsharid (1736–96) periods and used as a medium to depict large-scale portraits of political rulers. This artistic tradition reached an apogee under the Qajar dynasty (1785–1925). The Qajar rulers used life-size portraits as integral facets of palace architecture and as diplomatic gifts to promote their international image in England, France, Russia and other foreign countries where they wished to foster political ties. Life-size paintings of a more poetic and sensual nature, such as still-life subjects and dancers, were also displayed in the private areas of palaces such as the living quarters and small reception rooms. From the 1850s, art forms and new technologies including painting, lithography, photography, and music, were disseminated more widely at the Dar al-Funun (‘Abode of Sciences’), Iran’s first institution of higher learning based on Western models. Many of these modern developments took place during the reign of the Qajar ruler, Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848–96).

It is unclear whether this painting by an unknown artist is based on a real or imagined scene. The subject matter, a group of women and children seated on a swirling floral carpet, passing the time together in the anderun (the private ladies’ quarters of the home), is depicted in typical Qajar fashion mixing European styles of shading, landscapes, and depth with Persian modes of ‘moon-faced’ idealised portrait painting. The woman seated in the centre right holds up a water-pipe (qalyan) that she is smoking and is the only figure in the scene gazing directly at the viewer. Her ruband (fine cotton face-veil worn outside the home by urban-class Qajar women), is flipped over the back of her head and she appears to be wearing a black chador, an all-enveloping sleeveless outer garment, over which her ruband is tied. A boy, seated with his back to the viewer, reaches for a piece of fruit while another woman to the left cradles a child in her lap. It is unclear if she is the child’s mother or his wet-nurse. Her plain clothing, compared to the central figure’s lavishly embroidered sleeves, suggests a subordinate role in the scene. Two women on the far left entertain the group with music, played on a dutar (two-stringed long-necked lute) and accompanied with song (apparent from the hand gesture of the woman on the left). The three figures on the far right, a seated woman, a boy, and a young girl (possibly a maidservant), balance the composition and are placed behind a Russian samovar full of boiling water that heats an English teapot. All three boys in the painting wear gold-embroidered skullcaps (kolah) and the women wear voluminous ballerina-style skirts (shalita, worn over shalvar trousers), long-sleeved blouses (pirahan) with frilly sleeves under short jackets and colourful headscarves.

Neither the identity of the painting's patron nor the context in which it was displayed are known. The scene recalls the types of staged photographs taken by foreign and local photographers, such as the Tehran-born Armenian Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933), who worked for foreign scholars unable to travel easily through Qajar lands. Sevruguin and others also had their own studios where they took portraits of ordinary citizens and famous sites, which were also sold to tourists. Photographs and European paintings often served as models for Qajar paintings, allowing artists to pay closer to attention to realism, modelling, chiaroscuro, shading, and other three-dimensional qualities. The fact that the unidentified women are veiled in a private, female domestic context suggests that the photographer and/or painter were men and that the scene was staged. Was this painting made for a well-to-do Iranian household or a European of some means visiting Iran?