A white-eared bulbul, signed Reza 'Abbasi, Safavid Isfahan, Iran, circa 1620

A WHITE-EARED BULBUL
SIGNED REZA 'ABBASI, SAFAVID ISFAHAN, IRAN, CIRCA 1620
Opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper, the bulbul perches on a rock with a tree behind it, signed on the right hand side, the painting mounted as an album page with a gold speckled inner margin and outer margin illuminated with birds and insects, within gold and polychrome rules, pasted onto blue card
Painting 6 3/4 x 3 3/4in. (17 x 9.5cm.); folio 13 7/8 x 9in. (35.2 x 23cm.)
This painting is by Reza ‘Abbasi (ca. 1565-1635) who is considered perhaps the most innovative and influential later Safavid artist. A contemporary of Shah ‘Abbas, he joined the Shah’s atelier soon after his accession in 1587, and continued to work into the 1630s. Our painting clearly illustrates Reza’s keen sense of colouristic nuance, his amazing naturalistic precision, and his ability to express tactile qualities, such as the feathers of our bulbul, all of which come together to form the controlled exuberance for which he is known.
Paintings of birds are less common in the corpus of works by Reza’ Abbasi than handsome youths or lovers. In her seminal work on the artist, Sheila Canby writes that Reza had a penchant for including birds ‘in conversation’ with one another in his paintings, and writes that it is therefore not surprising that he also then took single birds as subjects (Sheila Canby, The Rebellious Reformer. The Drawings and Paintings of Riza-yi ‘Abbasi of Isfahan, London, 1996, p.132). She mentions only three others that are known – one a copy of a work by Bihzad of a Jay Perched in Flowers (cat.97 in her book, present whereabouts unknown); another a bulbul or nightingale mounted with Lovers in a Landscape which she dates to the 1620s (cat.53, now in the Seattle Art Museum, inv.no.IS36.13); and a Study of a Bird which is dated Sha’ban AH 1043/February 1634 AD, a year before his death (cat.98, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc.no.1985.2, acquired at Christie’s, London, 28 November 1983, lot 125). Like those, our painting depicts the bulbul perched on a craggy rock, a large leafy tree swaying in the background. The level of detail exhibited in our painting is closer to that of the Seattle bird. Canby argues that the Met bird reveals brushwork that is slightly less crisp, and forms that are slightly less well defined – perhaps due to his advanced age at the time of painting it (Canby, op.cit., p.132).
Amongst Reza ‘Abbasi’s most brilliant followers were Mu’in Musavvir and Shaykh ‘Abbasi, both of whom also executed bird studies similar in a style to ours, as a vogue for highly finished and meticulously accurate studies of birds developed during the second half of the 17th century. Two very similar paintings of a bulbul perched on a rock are signed by Mu’in Musavvir – one is in the Keir Collection (illustrated here, and bought at Christie’s, London, 4 July 1985, lot 194), the other is in Yale University Art Gallery (2001.138.9). So close are Mu’in’s paintings to this painting by his teacher that he must have been aware of it and used it as his model. Although Reza was a prolific artist with numerous students, there are very few works by him where we can clearly identify a direct copy done by one of his students. One such example is the Nashmi Kaman-dar ‘the Archer’, where the original by Reza is in the Harvard Art Museum (1960.197), and a copy by Mu’in in the Smithsonian (S1998.15). The rediscovery of this painting and its similarity to the Keir and Yale Mu’in birds, provides another valuable demonstration of the master-student relationship.
Our painting was sold in one of three sales of the Sevadjian collection which took place at Hotel Drouot in Paris on 22/23 November 1960, 18/20 March 1961 (where ours appeared as lot 46) and 31 October 1961. Between the first two sales there were 12 similar bird paintings sold. Two were signed Reza ‘Abbasi (one is ours, the other was painted on cotton and is listed in Sheila Canby’s work on the artist as having an ‘uncertain attribution’), two paintings by Mu’in Musavvir, two by Shafi’ ‘Abbasi, and one by ‘Ali Naqi bin Shaykh ‘Abbasi. The others were unsigned. Many shared similar borders with ours, and the late Mlle Densmore, who was responsible for the Sevadjian catalogues stated that the paintings originally formed part of a royal album, of birds (B.W.Robinson, R.W.Skelton, Friedrich Spuhler, Géza Fehérvári, Oliver Watson and R.H.Pinder-Wilson, Islamic Art in the Keir Collection, London, 1988, p.21).

A Safavid portrait of Reza by, Mu’in Musavvir, sold Christie’s, New York as part of The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, 10 May 2018, lot 1001. A painting by Reza of a Seated Youth sold more recently Christie’s, London, 25 October 2018, lot 56.