A drawing of a Qajar prince, standing in a forest, attributed to Mirza Abu'l Hasan Ghaffari, Sani al-Mulk, Persia, dated 1844-45

A drawing of a Qajar prince, standing in a forest, attributed to Mirza Abu'l Hasan Ghaffari, Sani al-Mulk
Persia, dated AH 1260/AD 1844-45
Pencil on paper, signed and dated lower left in nasta'liq script
433 x 317 mm.
The signature reads: 'The work of Mirza Abu'l-Hasan Ghaffari, the year 1260/1844-45'.
Abu'l-Hasan Khan Ghaffari, Sani' al-Mulk (1814-66) studied in Italy and was appointed the Chief Painter (naqqash-bashi) in AH 1267/AD 1850 and titled Sani' al-Mulk in AH 1277/AD 1860-61. He is most celebrated as a painter for his work and supervision of the production of the One Thousand and One Nights manuscript in the Gulistan Palace Library and the murals of the Nizamieh Palace. He was also involved with the College of Arts (dar al-funun) in Tehran and with the illustrations of the official newspaper of the time, in which he did the portraits of many high officials which were produced in lithograph forms. His recorded work is dated between AH 1258/AD 1842 and 1278/1862. (For more on him and his works, see: B. W. Robinson, N. D. Khalili, T. Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic World: Part II, London 1997,p. 154; and M. A. Karimzadeh-Tabrizi, The Lives & Art of Old Painters of Iran, Vol. I, London 1985, pp. 23-34; and the article by B. W. Robinson in Encyclopaedia Iranica.

The figure has not been securely identified, but one possible candidate is Dust 'Ali Khan, Mu'ayyir al-Mamalik (1819-73), a prominent courtier and Court Treasurer, who appears in a fine portrait in watercolour by Ghaffari, dated to 1845-55 (see Christie's South Kensington, The Saeed Motamed Collection, Part I, 22nd April 2013, lot 248; a portrait of him dated 1846 by Mirza Baba al-Isfahani al-Imami is illustrated and discussed in L. Diba (ed.), Royal Persian Paintings: the Qajar Epoch 1785-1925, Brooklyn 1999, pp. 226-227, no. 68.