The writer has before him a fair instance of the native artist’s rendering of the scene at the administration of the bastinado. This picture is an original painting in oils, twenty-four inches by sixteen, on papier-mâché. The details were given to the artist by the writer in conversation, sketched by him in white paint on the papier-mâché during the giving of the order, in the course of half an hour; and the finished picture was completed, varnished, and delivered in a week. The price paid for this original work in oils in 1880 was seven shillings and sixpence. The costumes are quite accurate in the minutest detail; the many and staring colours employed are such as are in actual use; while the general mise en scène is very correct.
Many similar oil-paintings were executed for the writer by Persian artists, giving graphic renderings of the manners and customs of this little-known country. They were always equally spirited, and minutely correct as to costume and detail, at the same low price; a small present for an extraordinarily successful performance gladdening the heart of the artist beyond his expectations.
As to original work by Persian artists in water-colour, remuneration is the same—so much per diem. A series of water-colours giving minute details of Persian life were wished; and a clever artist was found as anxious to proceed as the writer was eager to obtain the sketches. The commission was given, and the subjects desired carefully indicated to the artist, who, by a rapid outline sketch in pencil, showed his intelligence and grasp of the subject. The writer, delighted at the thought of securing a correct and permanent record of the manners and customs of a little-known people, congratulated himself. But, alas! he counted his chickens before hatching; for the artist, on coming with his next water-colour, demanded, and received, a double wage. A similar result followed the finishing of each drawing; and though the first only cost three shillings, and the second six, the writer was reluctantly compelled to stop his commissions, after paying four times the price of the first for his third water-colour, on the artist demanding twenty-four shillings for a fourth—not that the work was more, but as he found himself appreciated, the wily painter kept to arithmetical progression as his scale of charge; a very simple principle, which all artists must devoutly wish they could insist on.
For a reduced copy of a rather celebrated painting, of which the figures were life-size, of what might be called, comparatively speaking, a Persian old master—for this reduction, in oils, fourteen inches by eight, and fairly well done, the charge was a sovereign. The piece was painted on a panel. The subject is a royal banqueting scene in Ispahan—the date a century and a half ago. The dresses are those of the time—the ancient court costume of Persia. The king in a brocaded robe is represented seated on a carpet at the head of a room, his drinking-cup in his hand; while his courtiers are squatted in two rows at the sides of the room, and are also carousing. Minstrels and singers occupy the foreground of the picture; and a row of handsome dancing-girls form the central group. All the figures are portraits of historical personages; and in the copy, the likenesses are faithfully retained.
The palaces of Ispahan are decorated with large oil-paintings by the most eminent Persian artists of their day. All are life-size, and none are devoid of merit. Some are very clever, particularly the likenesses of Futteh Ali Shah and his sons, several of whom were strikingly like their father. As Futteh Ali Shah had an acknowledged family of seventy-two, this latter fact is curious. These paintings are without frames, spaces having been made in the walls to receive them. The Virgin Mary is frequently represented in these mural paintings; also a Mr Strachey, a young diplomate who accompanied the English mission to Persia in the reign of our Queen Elizabeth, is still admired as a type of adolescent beauty. He is represented with auburn hair in the correct costume of the period; and copies of his portrait are still often painted on the pen-cases of amateurs. These pen-cases, or kalamdans, are the principal occupation of the miniature-painter. As one-fourth of the male population of Persia can write, and as each man has one or more pen-cases, the artist finds a constant market for his wares in their adornment. The pen-case is a box of papier-mâché eight inches long, an inch and a half broad, and the same deep. Some of them, painted by artists of renown, are of great value, forty pounds being a common price to pay for such a work of art by a rich amateur. Several fine specimens may be seen in the Persian Collection at the South Kensington Museum. It is possible to spend a year’s hard work on the miniatures painted on a pen-case. These are very minute and beautiful. The writer possesses a pen-case painted during the lifetime of Futteh Ali Shah, a king of Persia who reigned long and well. All the faces—none more than a quarter of an inch in diameter—are likenesses; and the long black beard of the king reaching to his waist, is not exaggerated, for such beards are common in Persia.
Bookbinding in Persia is an art, and not a trade; and here the flower and bird painter finds his employment. Bright bindings of boards with a leather back are decorated by the artist, principally with presentments of birds and flowers, both being a strange mixture of nature and imagination; for if a Persian artist in this branch thinks that he can improve on nature in the matter of colour, he attempts it. The most startling productions are the result; his nightingales being birds of gorgeous plumage, and the colours of some of his flowers saying much for his imagination. This method of ‘painting the lily’ is common in Persia; for the narcissus—bouquets of which form the constant ornament in spring of even the poorest homes—is usually ‘improved’ by rings of coloured paper, silk, or velvet being introduced over the inner ring of petals. Startling floral novelties are the result; and the European seeing them for the first time, is invariably deceived, and cheated into admiration of what turns out afterwards to be a transparent trick. Of course, this system of binding each book in an original cover of its own, among a nation so literary as the Persians, gives a continuous and healthy impetus to the art of the flower-painter.
Enamelling in Persia is a dying art. The best enamels are done on gold, and often surrounded by a ring or frame of transparent enamel, grass-green in colour. This green enamel, or rather transparent paste, is supposed to be peculiar to the Persian artist. At times, the gold is hammered into depressions, which are filled with designs in enamel on a white paste, the spaces between the depressions being burnished gold. Large plaques are frequently enamelled on gold for the rich; and often the golden water-pipes are decorated with enamels, either alone, or in combination with incrusted gems.
Yet another field remains to the Persian artist—that of engraving on gold, silver, brass, copper, and iron. Here the work is usually artistically good, and always original, no two pieces being alike.
Something must be said about the artist and his studio. Abject poverty is the almost universal lot of the Persian artist. He is, however, an educated man, and generally well read. His marvellous memory helps him to retain the traditional attributes of certain well-known figures: the black-bearded Rūstum (the Persian Hercules), and his opponent the Deev Suffid or White Demon; Leila and Mujnūn, the latter of whom retired to the wilderness for love of the beautiful Leila; and in a painfully attenuated state, all his ribs being very apparent, is always represented as conversing with the wild beasts, who sit around him in various attitudes of respectful attention. Dr Tanner could never hope to reach the stage of interesting emaciation to which the Persian artists represent Mujnūn to have attained. Another popular subject is that of Solomon in all his glory.
These legends are portrayed with varying art but unquestionable spirit, and often much humour; while the poetical legends of the mythical history of ancient Persia, full of strange imagery, find apt illustrators in the Persian artist. The palmy days of book-illustration have departed; the cheap reprints of Bombay have taken away the raison d’être of the caligraphist and book-illustrators, and the few really great artists who remain are employed by the present Shah in illustrating his great copy of the Arabian Nights by miniatures which emulate the beauty and detail of the best specimens of ancient monkish art, or in making bad copies of European lithographs to ‘adorn’ the walls of the royal palaces.