Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T18:15:48.013Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Muhammad Ghaffari: The Persian Painter of Modern Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Layla S. Diba
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, Qajar Iran, like its neighbor the Ottoman Empire, faced the dual challenges of colonialism and modernity. This paper considers the role of art education and art production in its response to these forces, focusing on the leading court painter of the late Qajar period, Mirza Muhammad Ghaffari, Kamal al-Mulk (1848–1941), whose career bridged the late Qajar period and the early twentieth century. Early in his career, Ghaffari was recognized as the leading exponent of academic painting, yet by the constitutional period his art had evolved into a style representing contemporary Persian life, a style which was informed by nationalistic discourses current in intellectual and political circles. This paper's consideration of the evolution of his style from a European modernism to an authentic Iranian modernism includes Ghaffari's training as a painter, the role of photography in the development of his style, his travel to Europe, and parallels with the art and career of the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , September 2012 , pp. 645 - 659
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York, 1978)Google Scholar.

2 Ringer, Monica, Education, Religion, and the Discourse of Cultural Reform in Qajar Iran (Costa Mesa, CA, 2001), 4–5Google Scholar.

3 Gurney, John and Nabavi, Negin, “Dar al-Fonun.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, VI (1993), 663Google Scholar; Maryam D. Ekhtiar, “The Dar al-Funun: Educational Reform and Cultural Development in Qajar Iran” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1994), 140 and 161–77.

4 Ali Adhari, M.S., “Ali Akbar Khan Naqqashbashi-Muzayyan al Dawla,” Payam-i Nuvin 5, no. 12 (1963–64/1342): 3Google Scholar.

5 For a study of the relationship of Iranian photography and painting in the nineteenth century, see Layla S. Diba, “The Power of Images: Qajar Photography and its Relationship to Iranian Art,” History of Photography Journal Special Issue on Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Photography in Iran, ed. Reza Sheikh and Carmen Pérez González (2012) (forthcoming).

6 See Diba, Layla S. and Ekhtiar, Maryam, eds., Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Period 1785–1925 (New York, 1998), 262–63Google Scholar, Figure 87 and 88, for a watercolor of Nasir al-Din Shah and its photographic model.

7 The following biographical account focuses on aspects of Mirza Muhammad's life and career related to the question of modernity. It is largely based on the comprehensive biography and review of his career in: A. Ashraf with Layla Diba, “Kamal al-Molk, Muhammad Ghaffari,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, 15 September 2010, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kamal-al-molk-mohammad-gaffari.

8 See Ghani, Ghassem, Yaddasht-ha-yi Doktor Ghassem Ghani, vol. 5 (London, 1981), 28Google Scholar.

9 Mirza Muhammad states that he spent eight years at the Dar al Funun. It is unclear whether he was a teacher as well as a student. Ghani, Yaddasht-ha-yi, 28.

10 See Zoka, Yahya, Tarikh-i Akkasi va Akkasan Pishgam dar Iran [The History of Photography and Pioneer Photographers in Iran] (Tehran, 1997), 7Google Scholar, Figure 3, for a portrait of Crown Prince Nasir-al-Din Mirza, 1881.

11 See Golgasht dar Negarestan, Promenade in the Picture Gallery: An Album of Iranian and European Paintings from the Sa‘dabad Museum of Fine Arts (Tehran, 1992), 40–41, Figure 28 and 28a (Detail) for a painting of a nomadic encampment entitled “Nomadic Life in the Valley of Lar” dated 1308 AH/1891.

12 Sohayli-Khonsari, Ahmad, Kamal-i Honar. Ahval va Asar-i Muhammad Ghaffari Kamal al-Molk (Tehran, 1368/1989), 22Google Scholar.

13 Wright, Alastair, “The Work of Translation: Turkish Modernism and the ‘Generation of 1914’,” in Edges of Empire: Orientalism and Visual Culture, ed. Hackforth-Jones, J. and Roberts, M. (Oxford, 2005), 152Google Scholar.

14 Ghani, Yadasht-ha-yi, vol. V, 294.

15 Kia, Mehrdad, “Persian Nationalism and the Campaign for Language Purification,” Middle Eastern Studies, 34, no. 2 (April 1998): 11, 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad, “Refashioning Iran: Language and Culture during the Constitutional Revolution,” Iranian Studies, 23, no. 1–4 (1992): 77, 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Emine Fetvaci, “An Orientalist Reconsidered. Osman Hamdi” (BA thesis, Williams College, 1996), 59.

17 Wright, Alastair, “The Work of Translation: Turkish Modernism and the ‘Generation of 1914’,” in Edges of Empire: Orientalism and Visual Culture (Oxford, 2005), 152–3Google Scholar.

18 Hamdy Bey and Marie de Launay, Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 (Constantinople, 1873), 7. First cited in Celik, Z., Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth Century World's Fairs (Berkeley, Los Angeles and New York, 1995), 42Google Scholar.