A Persian gentleman, perhaps an ambassador to a European nation, dressed in a late Safavid turban Continental School, perhaps Germany or Austria, late 18th Century

A Persian gentleman, perhaps an ambassador to a European nation, dressed in a late Safavid turban
Continental School, perhaps Germany or Austria, late 18th Century
Oil on canvas, with added signature and date Gros 1811 lower right, label on stretcher Gros...Ambassadeur de Perse
79 x 63 cm.
There was a 17th Century tradition of European portrayals of Persian ambassadors to the royal courts (see, for example, the two prints by Aegidius Saedler, of the ambassadors Zeynal Khan and Mehdi Quli Beg, sent by Shah 'Abbas, dated 1604-05, offered in these rooms, Bonhams, Islamic and Indian Art, 22nd October 2019, lot 40, and the discussion there). Our painting, however, is of a later date, the late 18th Century, but simultaneously appears to hark back to a Persia of around 60-70 years before. A late 18th Century depiction of a contemporary Persian would have to illustrate a Zand nobleman, with the distinctive turban of that period with its more tubular form and rounded top. But here we see a typical late Safavid turban, with a band of material along its crest, different to those of the Shah 'Abbas period. (See L. Diba (ed.), Royal Persian Paintings: the Qajar Epoch, 1785-1925, Brooklyn 1998, p. 149, fig. VI, for a painting in the British Museum dated AH 1134/AD 1721, with a number of figures wearing such turbans).

While it seems doubtful that we can identify the figure exactly, he is at least strikingly similar to, if not identical with, the sitter in a portrait attributed to an English artist, and dated to circa 1800 (Sotheby's, Exotica: East Meets West, 1500-1900, 25th May 2005, lot 199, to which we owe the note regarding turbans above). Here the sitter is probably rightly described as a gentleman, and the portrayal is much freer, giving the impression of being an unfinished study from the life. The motives for a European artist to depict a Persian nobleman dressed in the fashion of more than fifty years earlier can only be guessed at, and it is conceivable that both our work, and the Sotheby's one, are copies of 'exotic' figures after earlier paintings.