Expanding the Canon of Early Qajar Portraiture Date & Time
with Francesca Leoni
The University of Oxford is home to two fine and little-known oil paintings realised in the early years of the Qajar dynasty (1785–1925). The first, signed by Mirza Muhammad and dated AH 1213/1798, depicts a female musician playing the setar and belongs to a genre featuring large-scale courtly entertainers which peaked under Karim Khan Zand during the second half of the 18th century. The other painting portrays the second Qajar ruler Fath ‘Ali Shah (r. 1797-1834), whose art patronage, particularly life-size portraiture, became a hallmark of his rule. This second picture is neither dated nor signed and while it is broadly comparable to pictures associated with court artists like Mirza Baba and Mirza ‘Ali, it also shows unique features that set it apart from their well-known masterpieces. The enigmatic nature of this second portrait, alongside the unclear circumstances that led to its arrival to Britain and its poor state of conservation, provided the impetus for a cross-institutional interdisciplinary project which was launched in 2022 and completed in 2024. This talk presents the results of this collaborative effort by focussing primarily on the portrait of Fath ‘Ali Shah and builds on the evidence obtained from its conservation and various non-invasive examinations in order to propose a date of production. The talk will also be an opportunity to share the insights provided by integrated imaging analysis in relation to the production and reworking of life-size images under this transformative ruler. Lastly, this presentation will consider the painting’s afterlife with a view to nuance our current understanding of how official images of Fath ‘Ali Shah may have circulated in the early years of his reign.
About the speaker:
Dr Francesca Leoni is Assistant Keeper and Curator of Islamic art in the Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University. A faculty member in the history department and research associate at the Khalili Research Center in Oxford (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies), Dr. Leoni has had a long academic and museum career, having held roles at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2008-2011), Rice University (2008-2010), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2007-2008) prior to her current position.
Her research interests include Persianate book arts; Islamic divination; and modern and contemporary art from the Middle East. Her work has been supported, amongst others, by the Leverhulme Trust, the Barakat Trust, the British Institute for Persian Studies, the Pilgrim Trust, The Persian Heritage Foundation, and the Art Fund.
Her recent publications include Aegean Treasures: Greek Island Embroideries from the Ashmolean Museum (London: Hali Publishing, October 2022), In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2026), and a forthcoming multi-authored book about Georgie Wolton’s Anatolian kilims in the Ashmolean Museum.