Mahshid Modares
Mahshid Modares is an artist, art historian and art collector. She received her B.F.A. in painting from Azad University, Tehran, in 1995, and her M.A. in art history from San Jose State University, California, in 2006. Mahshid plans to continue her academic career by continuing her research and publications while pursuinga Ph.D. She is concentrating her studies on the history of visual arts in Iran during the 18th-20th centuries.
Mahshid was born in Tehran to a family that admires Persian literature, history of Iran, and art. Her father is a historian and her mother loves Persian poetry and writing poems. In 1990, Mahshid started studying painting at Azad University under the assistance of well-known art historians and artists including Ruin Pakbaz, Homayoun Salimi and Mohammad Ebrahim Jafari. Having a passion for art history, she started research, traveling around Iran to see different regions and monuments, and interviewing artists and writers among them are Nader Ebrahimi, Mehdi Hosseini, Babak Etminani and Hossein Ali Zabehi. She wrote her B.F.A. thesis, Realism Within Abstractionism, about how abstract painting can become a tool for demonstrating reality. And, she painted a series of 36 canvases titled Black Reality which focus on the beauty of Iranian art and culture, covered by a dark black veil. In 1994, Mahshid participated in the classes of Kaveh Golestanat at Honar University and studied his photographs and documentaries; such experience influenced her Black Reality Series greatly.
Mahshid moved to California in 1998 and started studying art history at San Jose State University in 2002. Her M.A. thesis Qajar Painting in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and Realism discusses the correlation between Iranian paintings of the Qajar period with European art. Mahshid’s thesis was nominated for The Outstanding Thesis Award in 2006. She, also, received two scholarships and one fellowship for her papers.
Mahshid has been publishing her articles, including: Lithography in Iran During the Nineteenth Century: Art for People, published in Iran Chamber Society; Cultural Improvements in Iran During the Qajar Period and the West, published in Iran Chamber Society; European Artists in Iran During the Qajar Period, published in Golestan Honar Quarterly; The School of Obscure World: Hussein Ali Zabehi’s Paintings,published in Architecture and Urbanism Magazine, Iran. She gives lectures at schools and organizations; the best examples are: Religious Art in Iran During the 19th-early 20th centuries: Breaking the Boundaries, Universite’ Laval, Quebec; Iranian Painting of the Nineteenth Century and the West, Osher Lifelong Institution, San Jose; and Elihu Vedder’s Illustrations of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Southeastern College Art Conference, Vanderbilt University, Nashville.
Moreover, since 1990, Mahshid has focused her talent on being a mixed media artist. Her three major series, Black Reality, Gabeh and Termeh, are the artist’s journey to comprehend her heritage and roots as an Iranian woman artist. In her paintings, the artist reminds the viewer of the splendor and excellence of Iranian traditional arts, often mislabeled as handcraft. She invites her audience to see Iranian indigenous art thoroughly and admire the generations of artists in many different fields of art, all of whom share a keen understanding of form, color,coordination, and mathematics behind the geometrical and arabesque patterns. With her compositions, Mahshid intends to communicate the same sense of harmony and rhythm that can be found in traditional Iranian art.
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The Impact of Photography on Qajar Painting
By: Mahshid Modares, 2008
In comparison with the previous periods, the nineteenth century Iranian artists and patrons were perhaps the most enterprising people of vision in term of openness to adaptation and transformation. Artists and patrons of the Qajar era1 were eager to learn about unconventional ideas, techniques, styles and even new inventions such as lithography2 and photography that were introduced to Iran as a result of Iran-Europe relationships. This article aims to scrutinize the role of photography as a vital element in leading Qajar painting toward European style realistic painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. Iranian artists took advantage of photography to study studio lighting, portraiture and indicating the personality of the sitter by using studio light.
Photography reached Iran in 1844, during the period of Mohammad Shah (ruled 1834-1848), the third shah of the Qajar Dynasty, and spread rapidly.3 Not only were the monarch and courtiers enormously curious about taking photographs and learning photography, but people outside the royal court also took great delight in this invention and enjoyed viewing themselves in photographs. Naser-al-Din Shah (ruled 1848-1896), for instance, started learning photography at age thirteen, when he was still the heir to the throne. Later, as shah, he established the Royal Album House in the Golestan Palace, Tehran, in which approximately forty-thousand photographs were preserved in albums, about twenty-thousand of which were taken by the shah himself.4
With the popularity of photography in Iran, many Iranian, Russian, and European photographers opened studios in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. For example, Dmitry Ermakov (1845–1918), a skilled photographer from Tephlis, came to Tehran and opened a studio. He was honored with the title of royal photographer at Naser-al-Din Shah’s court.5 Photography’s domination in Iran affected painting and the artistic point of view. One reason for this dominance was that Russian, European, and Iranian photographers had close contact with ordinary people. As with woodcarving, goldsmithing, metal carving, and other traditional studios that were a part of the bazaars or close to them, photography studios were located in the crowded parts of the cities, open to the public, and affordable.
Photography at this time was considered a science, not an art. For this reason professional photographers called themselves engineers,6 engineering was considered on the same level as mechanics. However, people found that with the advances in cameras just about anyone could become a photographer. In the public mind artists were seen as gifted individuals with extraordinary talent; photographers did not need such exceptional talent. A love for this invention led many individuals to the extensive use of photography, whether it was just for taking photographs or for studying its techniques. Artists, too, were curious about photography and some of them started using this medium. As an example, Mir Mosaver, an artist and book illustrator from Tabriz, practiced photography for a while.7 Other artists worked as professional photographers, one of whom was the lithographer Mosaver-al-Molk. He worked with Ivanouf, also known as Rousi Khan, in his photography studio opened in 1907.8
Many other artists used photography as a tool for their paintings and this affected their canvases. Photography assisted painters in creating more accurate works, which was how artists viewed its role in painting. Etemad-al-Saltaneh, the Minister of Publications in Naser-al-Din Shah’s reign, stated that “the essential outcome of the science of photography is on the art of painting [so that] photography had greatly served the art of portraiture and landscape by reinforcing the use of light and shade, accurate proportions, and perspective.”9 A number of paintings created during the reign of Naser-al-Din Shah and later were either copied directly from photographs or were based on photographs, creating more anatomically accurate and realistic works. For example, Kamal-al-Molk (1848–1941), the renowned artist of the Qajar period, painted three or four oil canvases from the portraits that Jules Richard, the French photographer, took of Mohammad Shah and Naser-al-Din Mirza in 1844. The original photographs no longer exist, but we know of them from the artist’s explanation on the canvases where he writes that the paintings are copies of Jules Richard’s photographs.10 According to the artist himself, Kamal-al-Molk used photographs specifically to create commissioned portraits of deceased individuals or for his own interest.11
One of his most appealing canvases is the Eight Portraits of Naser-al-Din Shah and Mozaffar-al-Din Shah at Different Ages (see Figure 1). In this 64×75 inches canvas, six portraits of Mozafar-al-Din Shah at ages nine, ten, thirteen, sixteen, thirty-eight, and forty-six and two portraits of Naser-al-Din Shah at ages ten and sixty-seven were painted inside oval frames. Kamal-al-Molk wrote the name and age of each person portrayed to the right of each face. By including a painted shadow on the edge of each frame, the artist provides a sense of three-dimensionality, suggesting to the viewer that there are eight different canvases hung on a green wall. The painting is not dated. However, since the oldest portrait is the one of Mozafer-al-Din Shah at age forty-six, it was probably painted in 1894 or later. In the paintings of their youth, both shahs are dressed in Qajar-style clothes, whereas portraits of the monarchs at ages forty-six and sixty-seven show them in French military clothes. The identification of the shahs as Iranian rulers is possible by the feature of their faces, especially the mustaches, and their jeweled and feathered hats. Although this canvas was painted during Mozafar-al-Din Shah’s reign, the figure of Naser-al-Din Shah at age ten is placed in the center and is bigger than the other portraits, indicating his importance. On the frame, the artist wrote the following: “The portrait of the martyred shah when he was the crown prince.” There is a good chance that these portraits were all painted from photographs for several reasons: The two rulers appear at different ages, the pose of each portrait is photographic, and the light on the faces resembles studio light. The use of different photographs taken at different dates, the expressive composition, and the realistic poses that indicate the sitters’ characteristics introduce this painting as one of the most important canvases historically and artistically of the Qajar period.
A painting, like a photograph, became very popular especially when the subject was as precise as a photograph by the hand of a talented artist. Even the artists who were chosen to teach at the Dar-al-Fonoun and Sanayeh-e Mostazrafeh Schools were tested for their abilities in this art form. From the viewpoint of the public and patrons, the artists who could paint in a European realistic style were modern, whereas traditional painters were considered old-fashioned. Such opinions led a few book illustrators to change direction and turn from traditional painting to a more realistic method to display their abilities in more realistic painting. The best example is Hadi Tajvidi, who stopped working as a miniature painter for a while to experiment with realistic painting to “complete his art,” as he said.12
Although photography became very popular in Iran and artists experimented with photography or used photographs for their paintings, they found it pointless to create photo-realistic paintings. Artists used photography as a tool to create more accurate works and to study studio lighting instead of natural light, which affected the indication of the sitter’s characteristics. They also provided portraits of deceased individuals and national heroes. Patrons and ordinary people, too, were enormously curious about photography. Even some women, who had never posed for artists unveiled, believed photographers were like physicians and that it was moral to have their photographs taken without a veil. It seems that photography not only affected painting but also the culture of the time.
Endnotes:
1 Qajar dynasty (1795-1925): Qajars were a tribe of Turkmans. Agha Mohammad khan, one of the leaders of the tribe, established Qajar dynasty in 1794-95 after the death of Karim Khan Zand.
2 See Mahshid Modares, “Lithography in Iran in the Nineteenth Century: Art for People”, Iran Chamber Society, http://www.iranchamber.com/art/articles/lithography_iran_nineteenth_century.php, 2008.
3 Pirooz Sayyar, “The Legacy of Qajar Period Photographers,” Fasl Nameh Tavoos, No. 1 (Fall 1999): 40. Photography (daguerreotype) was invented in 1835-39. In 1844, Jules Richard, a French teacher of English and French, took the first photos of Mohammad Shah and the thirteen-year-old crowned prince, Naser-al-Din Mirza, at the court in Tehran.
4 Sayyar 1999, 40. The Royal Album House in Golestan Palace and Museum in Tehran is still open to the public to view the photographs.
5 Yahya Zoka, Tarikh-e Akasi va Akasaan-e Pishgam dar Iran (The History of Photography and Pioneer Photographers in Iran) (Tehran: Elmi & Farhangi Publishers, 1997), 59. Some of the Ermakov’s pictures are kept at Tehran University.
6 Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar, eds., Royal Persian Paintings, The Qajar Epoch (1785–1925) (New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1998), 264.
7 Zoka 1997, 223.
8 Zoka 1997, 146–150. Ivanouf, also known as Roussi Khan, was born from an English father and a Tatar–Russian mother in Tehran in 1875. Roussi Khan and Mosavar-al-Molk expanded their work by purchasing a film projector during the reign of Ahmad Shah, the last shah of the Qajar dynasty. They started taking seven- to eight-minute movies first at court and then in wealthy people’s houses and at parties and wedding receptions. Because of interest in their work, they decided to show movies at night in their studio. Later, they opened a movie theater with 200 seats. It was the second movie theater in Tehran after Sahaf Bashi. During the Constitutional Movement, Ivanouf’s studio was closed and he left Iran in 1909. He died in1967 in Saint Cloud in Paris.
9 Ali Dehbashi, Nameh-haye Kamal-al-Molk (The Letters of Kamal-al-Molk), (Tehran: Behnegar Publishers, 1989), 264.
10 Zoka 1997, 7–8. Kamal-al-Molk wrote the following on the painting: “The portrait of the shah photographed by Mr. Richard with a Daguerreotype in 1301 A.H. [1843]. His majesty was 38 years old. Painted by Khaneh-zad Mohammad Ghafari, 1338 A.H. [1880].” Two other oil paintings are portraits of Naser-al-Din Mirza for the arches of the north hall over the gates of the Shams-al-Emareh building. The artist wrote the following on one of the canvases: “Portrait of his majesty at age 15 when he was crowned prince in Tehran. Mr. Richard, the Frenchman, took it with a Daguerreotype in 1260 A.H. [1804].” These paintings are held in the Golestan Palace and Museum in Tehran.
11 Dehbashi 1989, 157.
12 Akbar Tajvidi, “Naghashi Iran Dar Sadeh Akhir” (Iranian Painting in the Last Century), in Daneshnameh-e Iranshenasi, Vol. 1, edited by Mojtaba Anvari and Shirin Mohammadli (Yazd: Satavand Yazd Press, 2003), 184.
Figure 1 Information:
Unknown photographer, date unknown, private collection of Mahshid Modares and Siamak Beheshti. Detail of Eight Portraits of Naser-al-Din Shah and Mozaffar-al-Din Shah at Different Ages, by Kamal-al-Molk, undated, oil on canvas, 50×62 inches (128×158 cm), kept in Golestan Palace and Museum in Tehran, Iran.
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