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[Mihr ‛Alī]

(fl c. 1795–1830).

Persian painter. He produced at least ten full-size oil paintings of the Qajar monarch Fath ‛Ali Shah (reg 1797–1834). One of the earliest (1797–8; Calcutta, Victoria Mem. Hall), a portrait of him kneeling on a carpet, was probably sent as a present to the amirs of Sind in 1800. Two fine portraits (1803–4 and 1804–5) were painted for the Hall of the Marble Throne in the Gulistan Palace, Tehran, and a third, of the King enthroned (undated; Versailles, Château), was sent to Napoleon. These early portraits show Fath ‛Ali Shah with a squat neck and round face, but Mihr ‛Ali’s drawings improved in the first decade of the 19th century and later portraits show the King with more flattering proportions. These later paintings include portraits of the King standing (1809–10; St Petersburg, Hermitage), kneeling and holding a mace (1813–14; St Petersburg, Hermitage), and a third with the date obliterated (London, B. W. Robinson priv. col.). Mihr ‛Ali’s finest portrait, and perhaps the finest ...

[Ashraf; ‛Alī Ashraf]

(fl c. 1735–80).

Persian painter. Known for a large number of painted and varnished (‘lacquered’) bookbindings, penboxes and mirror-cases (see Islamic art, §viii, 10), ‛Ali Ashraf worked in a small floral style with a characteristic motif of pansies or African violets on a black ground. His style, notable for its richness and delicacy, is derived directly from that of his teacher Muhammad Zaman but is standardized and simplified. His debt to his teacher can be seen in his signature, az ba‛d-i mu ḥammad ‛alī ashraf ast, which can be read as either ‘‛Ali [the Prophet’s son-in-law] is the noblest after Muhammad [the Prophet]’ or ‘‛Ali Ashraf is a follower of Muhammad [Zaman]’. This is the way he signed four mirror-cases with fine bird-and-flower designs (1740–1, Edinburgh, Royal Mus. Scotlandr, 1921–43; 1747, London, V&A, 758–1876; 1751–2, New York, Brooklyn Mus., 88.92; and 1755–6, London, J. Pope-Hennessy priv. col.) and a similar but undated penbox (Berne, Hist. Mus., 21–...

[Camelot]

(b Douai, Jan 12, 1702; d Paris, March 4, 1766).

French painter and collector . His father, Jean-Baptiste Havet, a doctor of Armenian origin, died when Aved was a child. He was brought up in Amsterdam by his step-father, a captain in the Dutch Guards. At 16 he is said to have become a pedlar or ‘camelot’ (hence the nickname given to him by his French acquaintances) travelling through the Netherlands, drawing portraits at fairs. In 1721, after spending short periods in the Amsterdam studios of the French engraver Bernard Picart and of the draughtsman François Boitard (1652–1722), he left the Netherlands to work in the Paris studio of the fashionable portrait painter Alexis-Simon Belle. At this time he met other notable painters including Carle Vanloo and the portrait painters Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Baptiste Perroneau and Jean-Etienne Liotard. He also formed a deep and lasting friendship with Jean-Siméon Chardin, with whom he may have collaborated on occasion; they used similar techniques, and he may have encouraged Chardin to turn from still-life painting to figure painting in the 1730s....

[Mīrzā Bābā]

(fl c. 1795–1830).

Persian painter. Reportedly a native of Isfahan, he was employed by the Qajar family at Astarabad, as indicated by a signed drawing of a dragon and phoenix (1788–9; ex-Pozzi priv. col.). After Agha Muhammad (reg 1779–97) ascended the throne, Mirza Baba worked at the Qajar court in Tehran in a wide variety of materials, techniques and scales. His oil portrait (1789–90; Tehran, Nigaristan Mus.) of the Sasanian king Hurmuzd IV (reg ad 579–90) probably belonged to a series of historical portraits, for Mirza Baba painted a second series a decade later. One of the two surviving paintings from the later series (Tehran, A. H. Ibtihaj priv. col.) shows the Saljuq ruler Malikshah (reg 1072–92) with his two ministers. Other early works by Mirza Baba include a still-life with pomegranates, watermelon and flowers (?1793–4; Tehran, Nigaristan Mus.) and an arched panel showing Shirin Visiting Farhad as He Carves Mt Bisitun...

(Antonio Melchiorre)

(b Bologna, Jan 14, 1737; d Gondar, Ethiopia, between 14 Feb and March 3, 1771).

Italian draughtsman and printmaker . He showed early artistic promise and was apprenticed to Giuseppe Civoli (1705–78), a Bolognese painter and professor of architecture at the Accademia Clementina in Bologna. As a student he won the gold medal for architectural design in an open competition at Parma in 1759. He was consequently elected an academician in Bologna at the early age of 22. For his patron, the count and senator Girolamo Ranuzzi, he drew and etched (c. 1760) a notable set of plates of the Palazzo Ranuzzi (now the Palazzo di Giustizia) in Bologna. In 1761 he moved to Rome and began to take commissions as an architectural draughtsman. Here he was recruited to assist the explorer James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730–94) to draw and record Classical remains. For about three years from March 1765 Balugani travelled with Bruce, recording most of the known Classical sites of North Africa and Asia Minor. When Bruce decided to extend his travels to Ethiopia, by way of Egypt and Arabia, to search for the source of the Nile, Balugani accompanied him and made numerous drawings of botanical and zoological specimens, despite having also to compile weather records and travel journals. He was with Bruce when the latter discovered the springs of the Blue Nile (which they believed to be the source of the main river) in ...

[Muḥammad Bāqir]

(fl 1750s–1760s).

Persian painter. He is known for decorations in the margins of manuscripts, copies of European prints and 17th-century paintings, and wash drawings. His subjects range from floral sprays to nudes, such as the watercolour of a sleeping nymph (1765; Dublin, Chester Beatty Lib., cat. no. 282.VI). He contributed paintings and marginal decorations to a sumptuous album (1758–9; St Petersburg, Hermitage), probably compiled for the Afsharid court historian Mirza Mahdi Khan Astarabadi. Muhammad Baqir’s punning signature there suggests that he was a pupil of ‛Ali Ashraf. Muhammad Baqir signed one of the finest marginal paintings in a smaller but similar album (1764; dispersed; sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 23 June 1982) and may have been responsible for all of them, which include rose sprays and copies of Susannah and the Elders. Muhammad Baqir is sometimes said to have continued to work under the Qajar ruler Fath ‛Ali Shah (...

(b London, April 1, 1794; d Ely, Oct 16, 1845).

English architect. He was born into a wealthy and cultured family related to the Disraelis and the Ricardos, and he trained in John Soane’s office (1810–16), receiving what was then probably the best architectural education available in England, as in his watercolour of the staircase of Gower House, London (1813; London, Soane Mus.; see Chambers, william, fig.). In 1816 he began a tour of Italy and Greece, which was recorded in letters to his family (untraced; typescript London, Soane Mus.) and in drawings and sketches (London, Soane Mus.; see Jordan). After travelling via Paris to Turin, Florence, Rome, Venice and Vicenza, a meeting with C. R. Cockerell in Rome (1817) persuaded him to visit Greece; during 1818 he went via Naples to Thessaly, Constantinople and Athens, returning to Rome via Sicily.

In June 1819 Basevi was back in London at a moment when building activity was expanding after the depressed years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. His earliest commissions were minor alteration works for family friends or business acquaintances. In ...

(b Azay-le-Ferron, Indre, June 3, 1756; d Versailles, Nov 1, 1827).

French draughtsman, engraver, sculptor and archaeologist. He received instruction in drawing from Joseph-Marie Vien, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée and Jean-Baptiste Le Prince. In 1778 he departed for Italy, where he developed his landscape draughtsmanship and his passion for antiquity. He travelled incessantly, recording everything he saw and venturing out from Rome to Venice, Naples and Sicily. An example of the numerous drawings he produced is the Ruins of the Baths of Titus Seen from the Colosseum (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In 1782 a group of amateurs, under the patronage of Emperor Joseph II, commissioned from him a series of views of the Istrian and Dalmatian coast; these were eventually published in J. Lavallée’s Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie. After a brief spell in France, Cassas followed Marie-Gabriel, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, to his new ambassadorial post in Constantinople in 1784. He subsequently visited Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus and Asia Minor, recording his impressions of Alexandria, Cairo, Smyrna, the Temple of Diana (Artemis) at Ephesos and the Palmyra and Baalbek ruins. Many of the 250 drawings dating from this trip were of hitherto unrecorded sights. With Choiseul’s assistance Cassas published these works in the ...

Persian School, 18th century, male.

Calligrapher, illuminator.

This artist was a pupil of Hasan the Egyptian.

(b ?1715; d London, Feb 7, 1791).

English draughtsman, engraver and dealer. As agent to a number of patrons and subsequently librarian to George III, he was one of the most influential figures in the sphere of collecting in England for some four decades. He was the son of the Rev. John Dalton and younger brother of the Rev. John Dalton, poet and divine, whose connection with Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford (later 7th Duke of Somerset), forwarded Richard’s early career in Italy. He had arrived there by 1739 and may have trained in Bologna; by 1741 he was studying under Agostino Masucci in Rome and was already active as a dealer, selling a collection of prints in that year to Henry Clinton, 9th Earl of Lincoln, and cultivating the patronage of Sir Erasmus Philipps, Bart.

In 1749 Dalton visited Calabria and Sicily and then, in his capacity as travelling draughtsman, joined the party of James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, on a tour of Egypt, Turkey and Greece. He was possibly the first English artist to record the ancient monuments of these places. A selection of drawings executed on this tour was engraved by Dalton and published in ...

Lebanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born in Dlebta (Kesruan); died 1826.

Painter. Religious subjects, portraits.

The uncle of Kenaan Dib, in 1777, he became Superior of the monastery of Our Lady of the Fields (Dayr Saydat al Haqlé).

In a painting in the chapel of the Convent of the Saviour, he illustrated a miracle which took place in ...

Lebanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Activec.1800.

Painter. Portraits.

It is not known whether he was a priest or a layman. A known work by him is the Portrait of Bishop Mikhayil Fadel II, painted in 1819. The composition and execution of this painting are traditional and timid. The priestly garments and attributes make it decorative....

(b Bagnolet, nr Paris, 1706; d Malta, c. 1792).

French painter. He is not documented until 1738, when he was mentioned as a private pupil of Jean-François de Troy (ii), who was then director of the Académie de France in Rome; in 1739 he became an official student at the Académie. Among his student works is a copy (untraced) of Raphael’s Fire in the Borgo (Rome, Vatican, Stanza dell’Incendio), which was mentioned by Charles de Brosses and exhibited in Paris in 1741. In 1744, for reasons that are not clear, he left Rome for Malta, remaining there for much of the rest of his career and devoting himself primarily to portraiture and genre painting. His ambition as a history painter, however, was fulfilled to a certain extent as a result of the patronage of two Grand Masters of the Order of the Knights of Malta, Manoel Pinto da Fonseca and Emmanuel de Rohan. His first dated picture executed in Malta is a ...

(b La Roque d’Anthéron, Bouches-du-Rhône, Aug 19, 1777; d Paris, Feb 23, 1841).

French museum director, painter, printmaker, writer and military officer. He studied painting in Aix-en-Provence under Jean-Antoine Constantin, alongside his lifelong friend François-Marius Granet; further teachers included Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, Jean-Louis Demarne and, from 1796, Jacques-Louis David. He first exhibited at the Salon in that year. However, during the Empire he was chiefly celebrated as a soldier, writer and lover. He became Chamberlain and consort to Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, and was decorated for his conduct in the Portuguese and Austrian campaigns. In 1810 Charles Barimore, the most successful of his four Orientalist novels, was a great sensation in Empire boudoirs. Forbin’s most significant contributions to the history of art came when he returned to Paris after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814.

Following his appointment in 1816 as Director of the Royal Museums, to succeed Vivant Denon, Forbin’s first concern was to minimize the repatriation of works of art acquired by force during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In ...

(b Montpellier, Dec 15, 1807; d Paris, Aug 8, 1893).

French painter. He was trained by Eugène Devéria and Achille Devéria and made his first appearance at the Salon, in 1836, with Luca Signorelli da Cortona (Avignon, Mus. Calvet) and Flight into Egypt (untraced), the first of a number of religious pictures painted in the 1840s in the pleasant, sentimental manner of Eugène Devéria’s religious work. The Humility of St Elizabeth of Hungary (exh. Salon, 1843; Montpellier, St Louis), Conversion of the Magdalene (1845; Nogent-sur-Seine, parish church) and Adoration of the Shepherds (1846; Quesnoy-sur-Airaine, parish church) belong to an idea of the Rococo common in the 1840s. Glaize’s interest in 18th-century French art is also evident in Blood of Venus (exh. 1846) and Picnic (both Montpellier, Mus. Fabre). This element was less obvious in the 1850s. In 1852 he exhibited a scene of the savage heroism of the Women of Gaul: Episode from the Roman Invasion (Autun, Mus. Rolin), one of the first pictures on a theme that appealed to a new interest in the history of Gaul in the Second Empire. Increasingly, he adopted subject-matter favoured by the ...

[Avnatamov; Ovnatanyan; Yovnat‘anyan]

Armenian family of artists active from the 17th to the late 19th century in manuscript illumination, church decoration, iconostasis painting, portrait painting and lithography. Naghash Hovnat‘an (1666–1721) was a poet and artist who painted churches in Erevan. In 1720–21 he decorated the cathedral at Ēdjmiadzin; decorative fragments (tempera on dry plaster) have survived, as well as a scene showing King Trdat III (reg 286–330), his wife Ashkhen and his sister Khosrovidukht at prayer. Hovnat‘an’s sons Hakop and Harut‘un (birth and death dates unknown) illuminated religious books (Erevan, Matenadaran Inst. Anc. Armen. MSS, MSS 8645, 2162, 1522), decorated churches and executed oil paintings on Gospel themes in imitation of European forms. Hakop’s son Hovnat‘an (1730s–1801/2) was court painter to Irakli II (reg 1744–98), King of Georgia. He painted a series of pictures on religious subjects, as well as portraits of prominent Armenian ecclesiastical figures. In ...

Persian School, 18th century, male.

Miniaturist.

This artist was active in Astrabad.

[Muḥammad Ja‛far]

(fl c. 1800–30).

Persian painter. He was the most prolific painter in enamels at the court of the Qajar monarch Fath ‛Ali Shah (reg 1797–1834), but unlike his contemporaries Baqir and ‛Ali, Muhammad Ja‛far did not attach a title to his name when he signed his work. One of his earliest works is an inkpot for a penbox (1805; sold Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 25 May 1964, lot 2) decorated with busts of a young man and a girl. His most impressive pieces are large objects made for official presentation to foreign dignitaries. He enamelled several large gold dishes that are decorated with a lion and sun in the centre panel surrounded by alternating birds and floral swags. One (1813; ex-Kazrouni priv. col.; sold London, Sotheby’s, March 1954, lot 867) was presented to Sir Gore Ouseley (1770–1844), the British ambassador to Iran, and another made of solid gold and weighing more than six pounds (...

(b London, Jan 31, 1734; d Aleppo, Turkey [now in Syria], ?July 1786).

English painter, active in India. Following a varied training at Shipley’s, St Martin’s Lane, and the Duke of Richmond’s Academies, he painted portraits, reminiscent of Reynolds’s, in Oxford and the Midlands. His most ambitious portrait, stylistically similar to the work of Francis Cotes, is Lady Frances Harpur and her Son Henry (c. 1766–7; Calke Abbey, Derbys, NT). Kettle travelled to India in 1768, probably at the suggestion of Admiral Sir Samuel Cornish, who sat for him with Thomas Parry and Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Kempenfeldt in the same year (priv. col., see Milner, pl. xxi).

Kettle was one of the earliest British artists to search for a career in India. He established particularly good relations with the indigenous nobility; in Madras (1769–71) he painted the Nawab of Arcot, Muhammad ‘Ali Khan, and also native genre subjects. In 1772 he travelled to the court of the Nawab of Avadh (Oudh), Shuja‘ al-Daula, at Faizabad and painted a series of canvases, most notably the ...