Object Description
Oil on canvas, signed in Nasta’liq script lower right.
The signature reads: bandeh-ye dargah razi sani’ homayun, ‘[Painted by] the servant of the court Razi Humayun Sani’ Humayun’.
Karimzadeh Tabrizi records the artist as Razi Taleqani Sani Homayun, a Qajar illuminator and painter, a master at compositions combining flowers with human faces and all kinds of animals. Not much is known about his life: he was from Taleqan and often gave his birth place in his colophons. He had his own studio in the majma’ al-sanayi’ (College of Arts) in Tehran, which was the gathering place for other painters and artists of different media. His recorded work is dated between AH 1299/AD 1881-82 and AH 1322/AD 1904-05. See Karimzadeh Tabrizi, The Lives & Art of Old Painters of Iran, vol. 1, 1984, pp. 206-207. Also N. D. Khalili, B. W. Robinson and T. Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands: Part Two, London 1997, pp. 184-185. no. 404, pp. 198-199, nos. 421-22 for his work in lacquer.
This painting is apparently his only recorded work in oil.