Assembly of Four Sufis

An Unusual Assembly

This twentieth-century drawing is of great interest for several reasons. Thematically, it is a direct descendant of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century drawings of the scenes of entertainment and conversation in the open.[1] Similar to our drawing in intent, but different in context, since it is a picnic, is a drawing in the Cleveland Museum of Art (44.49, figure 34 in this volume). Stylistically, the Museum's drawing also descends from such seventeenth-century drawings as the Seated Dervish by Muhammad Tahir in the Keir Collection (III.352, figure 35 in this volume). Although little of Muhammad Tahir's fluid calligraphic line is to be seen in our drawing, the almost brutally caricaturized elders with their narrow slanted eyes and exaggerated noses and even the position of raised knees in the two elders in front are undoubtedly in the tradition of their seventeenth-century model. Also similar is the careful attention given to the finished rendering of the head, as against the simplified outline drawing of the bodies and robes. There seems to have been a resurgent interest in this mode of representation, which has a great potential for satire, in early-twentieth-century Persian art.[2]

[Swietochowski and Babaie 1989]

Footnotes:

I. See Blochet, Edgar. Les Enluminures des Manuscrits Orientaux . .. de la Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris, 1926, pI. LXXXIV; and Sotheby's, April 21,1980, lot 75.

2. The Local Meeting, Christie's, June 11 and 12, 1984, fig. 171.

Charles K. and Irma B. Wilkinson, Sharon, CT (until 1979; gifted to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Persian Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 13–December 31, 1989, no. 36.

Swietochowski, Marie, and Sussan Babaie. Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. no. 36, pp. 82–83, ill. pl. 36 (b/w).