>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:18 >> Mary-Jane Deeb: Good afternoon and thank you all for coming. I mean we have a very special program today and our speaker has come all the way from Paris to be with us and to share her research. I want to welcome her and of course to welcome Her Imperial Highness the Shahbanou who has been a great supporter of this library, who has been a great supporter of our programs and four years ago we had a big exhibit on A Thousand Years of the Persian Book and it not been for Her Highness, we would hot have been able to make it. She was-- she was there behind us. She met with Dr. Billington and said A Thousand Years of the Persian Book, we have to support this effort and the whole Iranian-American community rallied behind her and were able to put together the first and the spectacular exhibit of the Persian book. So, I am Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the African Middle East Division and I'm here to welcome you all and also as a reminder that this division, with the support of its members and-- who are scholars, writers, thinkers, and people who have a deep interest in the region, stand out and make a program such as this one possible. Dr. Layla Diba is a major scholar in the arts and history of Iran and she has an incredible career which will be shared with you in a moment, but I just wanted to be here to express a-- my gratitude to those who have supported us like Your Highness. So, I am passing now the baton to the head of the near east section who is going to say a few words of welcome as well. Thank you. ^M00:02:45 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:50 >> Joan Weeks: Thank you, Mary-Jane. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and particular Highness. I'm thrilled to have you here today. On behalf of all my colleagues, I'd like to welcome you to the African and Middle East Division and a very warm welcome to everyone, particularly about this program Kamal al Mulk and the Invention of the Modern Iranian Landscape. But, before we start today's program, we always like to give our newcomers a little overview. I'm afraid some of us have heard this for every single program they've been to, but we'd still like to give everybody a little welcome orientation to our division. This is a custodial division, which means that we actually have the books in our purview, in our custody, and this means that we build and serve collections to researchers from around the world and we cover over 78 countries and over two dozen languages. The African section includes all of the countries of Sub-Sahara Africa and the Judaic or Hebraic section covers Judaica worldwide and the Near East section covers all of the Arab countries, including North Africa, Turkey, Turkic Central Asia, Iran, of course, and Afghanistan, and the Muslims of Western China and the peoples of the caucuses. So, it's a very extensive region and we hope you'll come back and use our collections for your research. And just a couple notes of housekeeping. After the program, we invite you to fill in our survey. This helps us plan for future programs and also we'd like to invite you to try out our Facebook and our blog. We've left little papers so you can easily find them. Our curators are writing very interesting blog posts about special parts of the collection and if you like us on Facebook you'll find out about all sorts of other programs. So, please do that. And also, just one last thing, we'd like to remind you that this program's being videocast, so if you would like to answer a quest-- ask a question, then you're implicitly giving your permission to be videotaped. So, without further ado, I'd like to call upon my colleague, Hirad Dinavari, to introduce the speaker. Thank you. ^M00:05:12 [ Applause ] ^M00:05:16 >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you, Joan. Thank you, Mary-Jane. Thank you everyone for coming on a busy weekday and on such a beautiful day where you could probably be outside enjoying the fresh weather. We are very honored to have Her Royal Highness Farah Diba here with us. Total surprise and shock and we are very delighted that you're here, thank you, and thank you again personally for all of your help with that exhibition. It was not going to happen without the help that you gave us. We are also very happy that every year for Nowruz, the festival of spring that brings together vast regions all the way from Western China to the Balkans, many, many nationalities and many groups, Turkic and Iranian, we do a cultural Nowruz event every year. It is a huge honor to have a curator at the caliber of Dr. Layla Diba, who has accepted to come here and give this wonderful talk. So, I am going to not take too much time and Dr. Diba has a CV that is very long and I will try to give you a few highlights here and then give the rest of the time for her to speak. Our Nowruz lecturer figure, Dr. Layla Diba, is an independent scholar, arts advisor, and curator. She has been the director and chief curator of the Negarestan Museum in Tehran. Negarestan-- I'm sorry-- Negarestan Museum in Tehran from 75 to 79. Arts advisor for the private secretariat of Her Majesty Queen Farah Diba, and the Hagop Kevorkian curator of Islamic art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 2006, Dr. Diba was invited to develop programming and strategy for the future of the Guggenheim's Abu Dhabi Museum and to serve on the museum's Asian Art Council and the Middle East focus group. She has curated the landmark-- the landmark The Qajar Epoch. This is a book that is really a textbook. I have to tell you, as a librarian, I have referred many researchers including myself to this book on Qajar painting. So, The Qajar Epoch Royal Persian Paintings exhibition and the Brooklyn-- at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This was an exhibit and the book came with it. The book itself is a treasure trove of paintings that go back, if I'm correct, to the Afsharid period and it comes down to the end of the Qajars. It's wonderful book. The list of accomplishments go on and on and on. I would just like to come to the end and say from the many articles she has written that are scholarly, that are published in scholarly publications, she also sits on the board of Encyclopedia Iranica and the Soudavar Memorial Foundations. She is also the collector of Persian Islamic art and the benefactor and the advocate of numerous Persian cultural causes. Current projects include a study of Kamal al Mulk and the emergence of Iranian landscape painting, which we have the honor of hearing her first talk about this, as this has been something she's been working on, and the emergence of-- I said that-- and articles and contemporary Iranian artists like Shirin Neshat and Nikzad Nojoomi as well. So, without taking any further time, thank you again for making time to come down here and see us and give a talk. Please. ^M00:08:58 [ Applause ] ^F00:09:04 ^M00:09:08 >> Layla Diba: Your Majesty, honored guests. Thank you to my colleagues from the Library of Congress and to Hirad for your kind words and for inviting me to lecture on this auspicious occasion of the Persian new year. I am delighted-- is there light, by any chance? Can I have more light? OK. I'm delighted to speak about Qajar art again in the presence of Her Majesty Shahbanou Farah who is the founder and patron of the Negarestan Museum of 18th and 19th century Iranian art, which I had the honor to direct from 1975 to 1978 and which really was the impetus for a lifelong interest and career in the arts. Just for your information, since this lecture really is a preview of unpublished work, the text and the images are copyrighted. The recent discovery of a group of six late 19th century Iranian oil on canvas landscape paintings and a large corpus of 19th century Iranian photographs held in a private collection outside of Iran has provided the impetus for today's lecture. I wish to express my thanks to the owners for permission to present these works for the first time to the public and we hope they will be the subject of a comprehensive future publication. The corpus of landscapes was painted by the leading court painter of the Nasiri era Mohammad Ghaffari Kamal al Mulk, 1859 to 1922, who was also the principal exponent of European-style academic painting in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi eras. Kamal al Mulk is perhaps best known for his portraiture and architectural views, but my current research has led me to conclude that he had an abiding interest in the genre of landscape. I will argue that these landscape paintings present critical new evidence for the development of Kamal al Mulk's [inaudible] and that they play a significant role in the emergence of the Iranian landscape of the late Qajar and early Pahlavi eras. A subject which has hitherto been largely unexplored. The works fall into two chronological groups, as you will see. The first group features four views of Iranian mountain landscapes dated to the 1880's, which are among his earliest known works. The second group is comprised of two European landscapes, which may be assigned to sometime between 1898 and 1901, executed either in Florence or in Paris, both of which he lived in at that time. As a group, the paintings are remarkably fresh and largely unrecorded. The landscapes and their lengthy inscriptions by Kamal al Mulk himself-- you can see on the lower left or right there are like two, three lines of inscriptions. Giving details of date and location provide the framework-- thank you so much-- for our discussion. First, I will discuss Nasiri court culture in Kamal al Mulk's career-- thank you so much. Second, I will present an analysis of Kamal al Mulk's landscapes of the 1880's and his post-1900 landscapes and those of his school, the [inaudible] Kamal al Mulk. And, finally, consider their significance for the Iranian landscape tradition and the birth of Iranian modernism. So, first, Nasiri court culture, the setting. Court culture of the era of Nassereddin Shah, 1848 to 1896, was dominated by the will and whims of the autocratic ruler and centered in the Golestan Palace, the site of a precarious balance between Persian tradition and European modernity. Certain features pertain directly to the production of the landscape corpus under discussion. The era was marked by the introductions and enthusiastic acceptance of photography. Students were sent abroad to study, particularly to Paris, and a European academy-style art curriculum was taught at the Dar ul-Funun, the royal military college, as of 1862. The role-- the ruler created a museum for his collection as well as designated galleries within the premises of the palace. He founded also an office of publication and printing for a vast program of historical and scientific texts, European translations, and the Royal Court Gazette. These innovations served to enforce the power of the Shah by presenting an image of a modern and effective ruler and by mapping his territories and recording information on his subjects. In these endeavors, he was assisted by a vast array of courtiers and ministries, many of whom were invested in introducing European culture, technology, and eventually reforms. These institutions were accompanied by court activities such as yearly European-style exhibitions of artists' work modeled on the Salon d'Automne in Paris and more traditional Persian kingly pursuits such as court entertainment, visits to the harem, hunting trips, and more rarely military expeditions. The Dar ul-Funun housed both photographic and painting studios, both of which would have been known to Kamal al Mulk during his formative years as a court artist. Thousands of photographs produced for the court have survived. Although the portraits and images of archeological sites are the most well-know of the photographs, three previously unknown court stereophotographs, of which you see one on the screen, of the Iranian landscape and royal encampments which were commissioned by the rule from the court photographer [inaudible] in the 1860's have recently been published and these you see on the screen. The photographs are inscribed by the ruler and by Ali Reza [assumed spelling] and give the locations of [inaudible] and Aliabad as the sites. Unfortunately, further evidence from Golestan collections remains unpublished. However, now another very large corpus of photographs and landscape photographs outside of Iran has been brought to my attention. The three photographs serve as intriguing precedents for the landscapes painted by Kamal al Mulk with almost photographic realism in the 1880's. More interestingly, the new photographs, which I will discuss again shortly, are even closer in date to Kamal al Mulk's landscapes. As you can see, it's dated 1870's. Information on landscape painting at the Dar ul-Funun is sparse and we need to open a parenthesis on the development of this genre in Persian painting before Kamal al Mulk. Until the mid-17th century when European painting influenced Persian painting traditions, the Persian landscape was depicted in manuscripts in flat, decorative, and semiabstract style. Then European-style landscapes with modeling and recession, chiefly associated with the court painter Mohamad Aman became the vogue for manuscript painting and lacquer work of the 17th century. The next development does not occur until the mid-19th century. Landscape backgrounds of Sani' al-Mulk's watercolor illustrations for the Thousand and One Nights manuscript, about 1853. When we see a new infusion of European painting techniques, there may also have been an awareness of European landscapes through the interaction of Iranian artists with European artist diplomats and officers such as Colonel Colombari who flocked to Iran during the mid- to late-19th century. However, the interest in pure landscape seems to have been only limited since only a single painting with a landscape by Kamal al Mulk's teacher has survived. ^M00:19:07 Kamal al Mulk's Iranian landscapes would never have been produced without the ruler's patronage, which encouraged competition and rivalry between bazaar craftsman, court painters, and photographer. Another factor was probably the publication program of Mohammad-Hasan Khan E'temad al-Saltaneh, the court chronicler and chief minister for publication. In addition to histories of the reign, the ruler commissioned historical geographies of Khorasan, such as the [inaudible] and the most likely candidate for the context of Kamal al Mulk's Iranian landscape, the historical geographic dictionary, Mirat-ul-Buldan. This work was based on E'temad's data and observation of the provinces collected in the 1880's on the order of the Shah. As recently noted by Abbas Amanat, this project was informed by a new awareness of topography and the boundaries of Persia as a national entity. These developments occurred after the Shah's first two trips to Europe in 1873 and 1878 and reflect the ruler's awareness of the importance of documenting and controlling his domains vis a vis those he had seen. Kamal al Mulk's ascendency as a court artist and confidant of the ruler would coincide with these programs. So, we will look at his career from the 1870's to 1901, which is the framework of our paintings. Kamal al Mulk was born in 1859 to a family of prominent courtier statesman and artists from Kashan. His early training as an artist began with apprenticeship with his uncle, Abolhassan Ghaffari Sani' al-Mulk, chief court painter of Muhammad and Nassereddin Shahs, who had received training in Italy in classical painting and in the use of the lithographic press. Sani' al-Mulk became a teacher at the Dar ul-Funun, where prints of old master paintings and plaster casts he had brought back from Europe were part of the curriculum. Sani' al-Mulk was also editor of the illustrated Court Gazette and recipient of major commissions such as the Thousand and One Nights manuscript and the [inaudible] wall paintings of the Nasiri court. After the death of his uncle in 1866, Kamal al Mulk continued his studies at the Dar ul-Funun for eight years. During the 1870's, he studied painting with Mirza Ali Akbar Mozayyen-od-Doleh, also born in Kashan, who was Sani' al-Mulk's successor at the Dar ul-Funun. Mozayyen-od-Doleh was a graduate or the only graduate of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which he frequented in the 1850's. He faithfully applied the methods of the French academy and probably retained aspects of the curriculum already introduced by Sani' al-Mulk. Kamal al Mulk maintained that Mozayyen-od-Doleh quote unquote was a trained artist in academic art and that quote I learned the art of painting from no one by myself. A still life you see on this screen dated 1907-8 and a copy of the mid-19th century French artist Rosa Bonheur's iconic painting attests to this artist's skills. As evidenced by the landscape which you see in the background of the painting Ploughing Time, Mozayyen-od-Doleh's landscapes were composed after and closely followed European models painted in the artist's studio. OK? This is very important that they are copied from other versions that were actually painted in the studio. And these confirm Kamal al Mulk's statement and the originality of Kamal al Mulk's open-air practice, which you will see in a few minutes. Now, Kamal al Mulk's skill soon caught the attention of the Shah who appointed him one of his personal attendants and, in 1881, court painter [inaudible]. During the following years until the ruler's assassination in 1896, Kamal al Mulk executed portraits of the ruler, such as you saw at the beginning, the famous hall of mirrors, and of the court, palace, and of the court notables and landscape views that surpassed all of his contemporary in their almost photographic naturalism, attention to detail, and color sense. His renderings of the hall of mirrors, the Takiya-ye Dawlat and the [inaudible] are considered among his masterpieces, yet he also showed an interest in genre scenes set in contemporary urban settings such as his paintings of geomancers and women. Kamal al Mulk appears to have accompanied the ruler on his trips throughout the provinces and this is a major theory that we have been developing-- I've been developing thanks to this close scrutiny of this group of paintings. So, the idea that Kamal al Mulk accompanied the ruler throughout the providence and his landscape and encampment scenes, which you'll see, were executed en plein air. The only artist of his era to have done so. Photography did play a role in his practice, particularly in portraiture and memorial portraits, but it was his extraordinary skill as a painter which is revealed in the works he produced in the decades when he was working for the court, including the landscapes under consideration. His great painterly skills were thus evident even before his trip to Europe where he would study the old masters and modern painters directly. A year and a half after the ruler's death, Kamal al Mulk requested permission to go to Europe to study. He remained there for a very long time, for about three years. According to his memoirs, he studied first in Florence with the royal portrait painter Michele Gordigiani, who was active until 1909. Now, Gordigiani is a documented painter. He was academic in training, but with a [inaudible] for naturalism known in Italy as the Macchiaioli movement. Kamal al Mulk expresses his admiration for the style of naturalism in addition to his better-known appreciation of the old masters in his memoirs. Now, as a parenthesis, what was naturalism? It was a mid- to late-19th century European cultural and literary movement which originated in France with the works of Emile Zola and included painters such as Courbet at the beginning. It was contemporary with impressionism and it espoused a form of heightened realism with social political awareness that was lacking in the light-hearted scenes of picnics and open-air entertainments favored by the impressionists. So, given Kamal al Mulk's support of the constitutionalists, the [foreign phrase] or intellectuals and of freemasonry, it seemed logical he would be drawn to this movement, which he encountered. Now, back to Gordigiani. He was the official Italian court painter and although he seems to have appreciated Kamal al Mulk's talents, he also abused it, according to the painter who claimed in his memoirs that Gordigiani passed off as his own work this portrait of the ruler of Siam, which was actually painted by Kamal al Mulk. And, believe it or not, my assistant actually located this painting on the internet. We have no idea where it is, but the idea that there is a Kamal al Mulk original out there that I don't know who signed it, I assume it has the signature of Gordigiani in it, but in his memoirs, Kamal al Mulk says that he painted this. So, those are the vagaries of being a student of a great master. After a year and a half, Kamal al Mulk went on to Paris where he rented a studio in the artist's quarter and copied works of the old masters such as Rembrandt and Titian in the Louvre. He also copied Italian landscapes and executed portraits of his fellow artists such as Henri Fantin-Latour, the French realist painter, and a series of remarkable self-portraits. His main achievement, in my view, in Europe was to perfect his knowledge of the techniques of illusionistic painting, which he had learned through his own practice in Iran previously, and to familiarize himself with the theories on naturalism and literature and art, which were in vogue in that time in Europe. ^M00:29:16 Although Kamal al Mulk worked as a court painter for a year, on his return to Iran, he did not like Mozaffar ad-Din Shah or his questionable taste in art, so Kamal al Mulk retired himself to Baghdad and Karbala for over two years. It is from this period that a shift in subject matter occurs with greater attention paid to urban scenes and images of the everyday life of ordinary people. This represented a major evolution in the visual language of Persian painting and would have a lasting effect on its subsequent development. The following analysis will discuss the role of landscape painting in the chronological evolution of his practice and highlight the significance of this new genre, landscape, for modern Iranian painting. The first group of mountainous landscape was painted circa 1882 and 1883, but I've not made a finalized reading of all the dates. These years coincide with Kamal al Mulk's early years as a court artist. Analysis of the iconography, topography, and inscriptions of these works confirm they were most likely executed when he accompanied the ruler on his frequent trips to the provinces. The inscriptions provide many locations from the area of Tehran and Mazandaran and I want to thank my research assistant Layah Bigdeli for creating this map of all the locations of his paintings. The inscriptions, which conform in style with those of his other published inscribed works, do not specifically mention a royal commission. Meaning there is never the phrase [foreign language]. OK? To the order of. However, numerous trips by the ruler to this area are recorded by E'temad al-Saltaneh in his daily journal by year, day, and month. So, the entries coincide approximately with the locations given in the works themselves, which is-- yes, it's like a goldmine for an art historian to be able to do that. So, all the works are painted in rectangular format from a high viewpoint which would provide a panoramic view of the valley and of the mountains. In order to analyze the relationship between photography and Kamal al Mulk's practice, comparison with the larger corpus of landscape photographs from the previously mentioned private collection and from the Golestan is needed, but-- which is beyond the parameters of today's talk. So, what I've done is with a single comparison between this image and this early photograph, these are both views of the same site and this we know from reading the inscriptions. A location called Kayvan Shokoh [assumed spelling], an encampment. So, you see Kamal al Mulk's painting and the photograph of the same location. We see how his choice differentiates his work from the published images taken by the court photographers. You can see the photographs are square format close ups of anecdotal scenes with the landscape barely visible in the background. So, a completely different approach and concern from that of the painter. The compositions are dominated by rolling hills and mountain foothills in the background and feature verdant valleys in the middle ground and dark, rocky outcrops in the foreground. Three of the paintings show large tent encampments in the middle ground. The scale of the encampments and the presence of red textile partitions separating off the main tent indicate these are royal encampments. The View of the Bend on the River, which you see here, features a wandering river and groups of trees on the hillsides as well as small retainers in black in the foreground and a mule train which gives scale to the whole scene. A View of [inaudible] depicts a small village clinging to the mountainside with an [inaudible] in the foreground and gardens and houses in the very front. As a rule, the foreground acts as a repertoire and the rules of landscape recession, modeling, perspective, aerial recession, and the direction of light are faithfully observed in the artist's treatment of the hills. Careful attention is paid to detailed rendering also of vegetation. Sometimes green and dotted with trees. Sometimes arid and craggy. And to do the texture of the rough earth. The contrast between green and arid areas is typical of the Iranian landscape between Tehran and the Caspian, a favorite area for picnicking and more prolonged country stays. The palette is also earthy. Terracotta and olive green shot through with white. Crystal clear blue is used for the water and the sky. The minute white tents with their pointed tops are scattered across the landscape as so many exclamation points is our small black figures and animals. The paintings have a roughly sketchy surface, not highly polished and finished, as if the artist wanted to capture the immediacy and specificity of his experience. This is confirmed by the inscriptions which give the exact direction of the artist's viewpoint. This is so remarkable. He says it's taken from the north, it shows the east and the west, it's the view through this valley. So, these inscriptions-- the reading of these inscriptions is very critical. The careful realism and photographic details suggest these paintings may have had a scientific or illustrative purpose linked to the ruler's previously discussed policy of recording and surveying his domains and to E'temad al-Saltaneh's numerous publications. This is entirely theoretical, but we need-- we need to have some theory here. Now, let us review the evidence of this group in light of the artist's known landscape [inaudible]. With this discovery, four new works are added to the corpus of 37 landscapes currently known and these are all listed-- I wrote a joint article with Ahmad Ashraf on Kamal al Mulk in the Encyclopedia Iranica. Dr. Ashraf really did the very hard work of listing almost every known work of Kamal al Mulk. For those of you who would like to go further. So, at that point, there were 37 landscapes. So, now we added four more to these, plus another six. The four works we just discussed in conjunction with a few others from the decades before Kamal al Mulk went to Europe illustrate the painter's increasing skill in composition in painting technique. So, you can see the artist learning and teaching himself and get-- this is 1888, about four years later than the early ones, and you can really see the amazing progress he's made. By the late 1880's, Kamal al Mulk's landscape become more monumental and awe-inspiring, not unlike the paintings of the Hudson River School capturing the majesty of the Alborz mountain range and the sharp contrast with the plains and plateaus below. By 1891, his focus has turned to the human element in the landscape. In his depiction of a tent encampment, which you see on the screen, which pre-stages the artist's more naturalistic approach after his return from Europe. I now turn to the two Italianate landscapes which share sufficient features to have been painted at the same time and place. One is signed and dated 1898-99, [inaudible] 1316, and the other bears an inscription. A very interesting inscription which states it was copied from an Italian painting and given in exchange for a work to another painter. So, his inscriptions are incredibly chatty and informative about even the relations between artists and none of this is currently known or recorded in the study of his work. This episode between painters could have occurred in either Florence or Paris since the dates bridge the time in both cities. ^M00:39:01 Stylistically, the paintings share many feature with Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, whose work you see on the screen compared with Kamal al Mulk's work. Italian landscapes by Corot such-- and you see, as I said, the comparison is when Corot visited Italy. And you see similarities such as the focus on the bridges and aqueducts, the style of the houses, the flat treatment of the surface, and the attention to light. These are all new. However, an exact model remains to be identified, but I haven't yet gone through every single one of Corot's thousands of paintings, so I'm still hopeful, but this is very close. The prototype could also have been, we must admit, by a later Italian follower of Corot's style. Although Corot was active earlier in the 19th century than Kamal al Mulk, he was still extremely popular at the turn of the century and would have been held up to the painter as a worthy model of western landscape painting to emulate. As was the case with the four previous works, the two Italian landscape-- and here is the second one-- I have identified this as an Italian landscape based on the vegetation and the presence of the church in the middle ground. They also document a key moment in Kamal al Mulk's evolution. After his European trip, he continued to paint landscapes until the 1920's. There are-- these are considerably looser in brush work with a softer palette and so fused with light and air compared to his earlier attempts. The two Italian landscapes illustrate just how he got there. How do we get from here to there? We may now asset that in all Kamal al Mulk painted over 42 landscapes, a considerable portion of his [inaudible] throughout his career. Now we pass finally to the last part of my talk, the invention of an Iranian landscape. The introduction and development of the new genre of European-style landscape painting is a neglected aspect of Kamal al Mulk's contribution to modern Iranian art. The importance of his legacy, which can be seen in the works of his followers who studied with him at the famous school that Kamal al Mulk directed for a very long time in the early 20th century. And, principally, Ali Mohammad Heydarian. Here on the screen, you see a work by Ghaffari and a work by Heydarian. It is worth noting that besides Kamal al Mulk's school, which again you see-- with this comparison, you can see how much influence Heydarian and how closely he followed him-- besides the school of Kamal al Mulk, there was also some proponents of the school of Europeanate [phonetic] landscape style, but this time channeled through Russian 19th century painting. This was passed on by the Rashti artist and teacher Sayed Mohammed Habib Mohammedi [assumed spelling] and by another painter, Hod Hussain Rasadi [assumed spelling] to a new generation of artists who were to become the pioneers of modernism, such as [inaudible], Nikzad Nojoomi, and [inaudible] who were all students of Mohammedi. In conclusion, Kamal al Mulk's early landscape paintings may be seen as part of experiments and documentation for the court enterprise of recording and presenting an image of Qajar Iran, an image based on, they thought, empirical evidence. When viewed in conjunction with his later landscape paintings, they also reveal to be-- Kamal al Mulk to be the truly innovative artist he claimed to be. So, I view even artist's memoirs with skepticism, but, in this case, we I think confirm that indeed how innovative he was early in his career. The only known painter of his generation to compose his paintings outside the studio is really remarkable. Equally important, the Italianate works form a bridge to his later landscapes using a more modern visual language. Hopefully we have advanced our understanding of later Persian painting and its art historical issues. These paintings are key works in the evolution of Kamal al Mulk from academic painting for the court to naturalist paining of Iranian modern life which was to have the most profound influence on the course of Iranian modern art. The formation of Iranian modern art involved not only European stylistic and iconographic conventions, but the introduction of new subject matter and genre such as the realistic portrait and what we've been discussing today, the independent landscapes; both of which would have been impossible without the genius of Kamal al Mulk. Thank you. ^M00:45:02 [ Applause ] ^M00:45:12 >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you, Dr. Diba. We have room for some questions. Feel free to ask. >> That was good. Thank you very much. I mean that was very exciting and it was an eye-opener. I wanted to ask you his painting was primarily the landscape in rural areas. Did he do anything in the city? Did he-- >> Layla Diba: Yes. >> Major cities in Iran. Did he try to convey as-- >> Layla Diba: Well, almost everything he did in the beginning of his career was to record the architecture of the Golestan Palace complex and so there are many views of the architecture and the different buildings in the-- and I showed one, which-- and they were extraordinary for the era, but it's interesting, as I said, when he had the-- he was no longer an official court painter that he went to Karbala and Najaf and he painted scenes of those modest towns and squares and the people. So, he began going beyond the parameters of the court certainly by 1900. And this continued much more strongly after he returned from Europe and I think this broadening of subject matter beyond the court to a more modern kind of interest in the-- in his own time. I think you see it evolving and it becomes much stronger in the early 20th century. So, yes, there are many, many urban city views. Yes. Her Majesty. >> Farah Pahlavi: Didn't he paint also a lot of people and musicians? >> Layla Diba: Oh, yes. Yes, yes. I mean his-- he's primarily known for his portraiture and they're remarkable, the court musicians, the court personalities, and they're so incisive. People, you know, mention photography because they're so realistic. I think the most interesting things he did was a series of self-portraits, which again was completely-- no Iranian painter ever had the temerity to use himself as a subject and there are like six self-portraits and he greatly admired Rembrandt. So, I think, you know, his interest in portraiture once he got to Europe and the Louvre-- and you saw Rembrandts, but his skill as a painter-- and I think he was interested in humanity and personality and many of his greatest works are portraits. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes, please. >> Farah Pahlavi: You know, because you're a scholar, where did you find out all the story about his life, going to Europe, [inaudible]. >> Layla Diba: Well, there-- yes. There is a-- there is a-- I wouldn't say enormous, but a substantial bibliography and I was mentioning earlier well before I came to the field there was a scholar called Sohali Honsari [assumed spelling]. You may remember him, Your Majesty. And he wrote a very comprehensive book on Kamal al Mulk and reproduced many of the works and I can base a lot of my remarks on that book, but also amazingly, again, Kamal al Mulk himself left his memoirs, wrote about 10 pages in his own hand and these were published in the memoirs of Dr. Ghasem Ghani, Cyrus Ghani's father, which Cyrus then published in eight volumes. So, we have the painter's own account and when I read these, I was reading the name of this painter, Gordigiani, I said this can't be right. You know? He must have misunderstood. How could-- what a strange name, gorgeous dawn, you know, Florence, but I went-- there-- you know, there are-- there are books of famous artists, Tina Becker is known as the bible of-- every artist is listed-- and Kamal al Mulk gave the correct spelling and then we tracked this down. So, his own memoirs are a very valuable resource that scholars have not used enough and they didn't realize-- I mean there are incredible nuggets in there and he talks about his relationship with the ruler and he was accused at one point of stealing something from the [inaudible] because-- I mean it was very personal and so his memoirs, even though they are 10 pages long, they're very, very informative about his life. But-- so, there's been a lot of scholarship. I would actually use this occasion to mention something that is a plea. In my work on this, because I was-- I am not able to go back to Iran. I do not wish to. I have to rely on printed publications and, unfortunately, the quality of the color makes it very difficult to draw conclusions and so for the advancement of not my work, but just the advancement of history, if you look, I chose a page from Heydarian's book, but there are other books where the colors are completely different. Completely. And so it's a matter of-- for scholars and connoisseurs worldwide who really want to know what Kamal al Mulk's paintings look like who cannot go to Iran, they need to publish things that are accurate in color. So, I'm still very careful about what I say in terms of his later work and of all his work, which is why this group of paintings which I could examine personally and I know that the colors are right and the inscriptions are correctly read and so on. But I hope very much our Iranian colleagues will understand how important this would be and they will publish-- they're almost all in the Golestan Palace. Some in the Malek Library, which is nice, but they really need better printing and it's 30 year-- well, yeah, 1896, at least 20-- 1996 I think is when Sohali's book was printed. Yes, sir. Yes. ^M00:52:00 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M00:52:10 Oh really? Yes. ^M00:52:12 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M00:52:16 Oh, really? ^M00:52:19 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M00:52:27 What was his first name? ^M00:52:31 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M00:52:33 Title. Yes. You know, there is all-- there is really nothing published on other painters of the Iranian landscape, which why I'm careful to say this is a work in progress. I think many of them were destroyed during the constitutional revolution. Many of them I think were created for patrons who had mansions and palaces in Tehran that were just, you know, ransacked. Because none of them are published. And so this is a huge gap. So, we need to use history and anecdote to fill this in a little bit and hopefully Iranian families who have paintings-- family paintings-- may eventually make them available and as your comment is something one can follow up. We do know, actually, the names of many of the students in Kamal al Mulk's school, but we don't know which of them painted landscapes, but you'll get my brain working. Pardon? ^M00:53:40 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M00:53:45 Well, I think at the-- it may be privately, as you said. There is-- there is a source which I haven't referred to because I've got to find it again. It's by [inaudible] and he wrote a short two-page history of the artists of Nassereddin Shah and, in my next lecture, I believe he refers to landscape paintings, but we have no surviving examples. So-- you have some? No? You're just going I wish I had some. But I believe in the potential of research and I hope young scholars and more-- through more dialogues like this one, we just need to unearth, you know, archeologically sort of unearth this information that's held in family archives, family memories-- because it's very recent memory. We're talking about 1920's, 1930's. So, really, I'm grateful to learn about any painters and hopefully we can follow up and we need to note the existence, absolutely. Absolutely. >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you. Go ahead, Simon. ^M00:55:06 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M00:55:31 >> Layla Diba: No. No. By now, no. No. I mean he really stopped painting for royal patrons by about 1900 and then he founded his own school. He-- his patrons were mainly constitutionalists and ministers and, you know, the grandees of the constitutional era. Because he was a constitutionalist himself and so-- no, I mean for instance he never painted a portrait of Ahmad Shah, I don't think. I think he-- the last one he painted would have been Mozaffar ad-Din Shah. So, in my article and in various places, I've mentioned-- and many of the, you know, the portraits are inscribed. In my article, in Iran modern, there's a painting of Hakim al-Molk. He was minister of education, I think. So, the patronage shifts and then when he has his own school, as I said, it's very interesting to see an interest in the common people, in ordinary people. Those weren't made for a patron. Right? He was an artist and he was a 20th century artist. That's why I call him the painter of modern Persian life because even his personality was amazing and very modern. So, I think he was an independent artist and the later patrons throughout his life-- and he was always commissioned, but, you know, his eyesight began failing and then he was no longer director of the school, so we know his patrons I would say from the first two decades of the 20th century. Does that answer? Too long, eh? >> Hirad Dinavari: The name Kamal al Mulk to me is an honorific title. >> Layla Diba: Yes. >> Hirad Dinavari: Is this something that was given to him and he ended up keeping it or did he at some point revert to what his birth name was? I'm just curious. >> Layla Diba: That's a-- that's a great question. Absolute great question. I'd have to study all his inscribed works to answer that, but-- and, you know, I mean we look at that very carefully because it helps us to date and create the context. I mean you can see that, you know, he will sign first Mohammad Ghaffari. Then Mohammad Ghaffari [inaudible]. Then Mohammad Ghaffari Kamal al Mulk or [inaudible]. Or-- there's a whole vocabulary of the artist's signatures which explain his titles and I do-- I would actually love to know what happened later in his career. How did he sign his works? But, as I said, one of-- you know, I would really need to collaborate with a colleague in Iran or someone who could go to Iran because it's very primary research. You're going to have to go and look at those inscriptions which are not visible and it's not-- you know, the research interests we have today are very different from scholars of a generation ago. The questions we ask. We have to go find the answers ourselves. That's your job. Yes, certain. >> Mary-Jane Deeb: I have a question. You know, in different parts of the Middle East, for example in Turkey, in Egypt, in [inaudible] and other parts, you had western artists who came and then they settled there and then they had an influence on the painters and the community. Was that the case then in the beginning of the century-- of the 19th century? >> Layla Diba: Very, very tenuous. I mentioned that-- very difficult to document. I suggest that, you know, there are some things you still have to suggest. I was very curious that none of the Iranian scholars mentioned these painter diplomats who were in Iran and some of them were very well-known, Jean Laurent was a very well-known 19th century French painter and great books of [foreign phrase]. So, there were European painters-- and this Colombari, there's a whole book of his works. So, there's no-- so far-- so far, no historical record of the encounters, but I would think they could be there. But I did look through E'temad al-Saltaneh's index to see if he mentions any European painters. He doesn't. So, I think, you know, there's still a great deal of research that would answer that question. How do we explain Kamal al Mulk doing this kind of painting? Mozayyen-od-Doleh, you know, nobody knows about this man. He was such an important figure. He was the painter, you know, the chief teacher at the Dar ul-Funun. All his work is gone. He studied in Paris, he went to the Beaux-Arts, he went to the-- he actually went to the-- studied in the studio of [inaudible]. So, there-- yeah! But we only have one painting left. Two paintings, maybe, and they appeared out of nowhere. So, we don't-- we don't-- you know, the evidence is so sparse, Dr. Deeb, but it's there. You know, one can hypothesize both-- but that's why I'm saying, well, Kamal al Mulk was an original because we don't know who he learned this from, but the other aspect is that the Nassereddin Shah by the 1880's had come back from Europe, he brought European paintings with him, and some of these have been published. I'm sure Her Majesty remembers these-- they were 19-20th century paintings in the Golestan Palace and I'm sure some of them were in the other buildings in [inaudible] and so on. And so my assumption is that Kamal al Mulk looked at those very carefully. Taught himself. But it's-- he never says it. All he says is that I taught myself. >> Hirad Dinavari: I'm curious, continuing with what Mary-Jane just asked, Russian and Armenian-- which is not quite European, but a bridge between the two because there was the Russian and Armenian connection also happening at this time with the west-- more western-- yeah. >> Layla Diba: I've also studied that. I have an article coming out on that, but that's why I mention this painter Mohammedi. He was-- who knew? One painter in Rasht. In Rasht! Yes! He was a teacher of [inaudible] and [inaudible] and Nojoomi! Nojoomi actually talked about another one in Hamadan. These painters-- again, because Kamal al Mulk overshadowed everybody else, so my job is a little bit to, you know, give some attention to the other currents and other painters and certainly Mohammedi was trained in Russia. I know-- I know that for a fact. And so this other-- that's why I mentioned that this other form of landscape painting and of modernism filtered through Russia is part-- is a chapter in the history of Iranian modernism. Not one we can go into today, but it was-- it's interesting that there were these two channels of, you know, influence that could come via France, Germany, Russia. So-- ^M01:03:30 [ Inaudible Speaker ] ^M01:03:47 Well, you know, after World War II, Iranian artists wanted to be modern. So, it was cubism, cubism, cubism. You know? They went to Paris and especially [inaudible] came back and Kamal al Mulk fell into disfavor. And also what's really remarkable is the Iranian-- the level of discourse among Iranian art critics, painters, artists, and they got very heated arguments over what Iranian modern painting should be. And Kamal al Mulk who had been so revered as the father of Iranian modernism was then accused of just, you know, being an imitator and he fell into disfavor. Because they were trying to find a new path, yeah, but, you know, we as historians, we look back and that's why I kept saying how innovative he was. Of course he's so well-known, but he also did some remarkable things that we can now reaffirm. But certainly I do-- and I've written this-- you know, his students were not on his level. You know? Nobody could equal Kamal al Mulk and neither-- and we've looked at, you know, Heydarian and there are books about the school of Kamal al Mulk. They were competent painters, but none of them had that drive, that passion. I mean Kamal al Mulk, you know, it was that passion to learn and to teach himself to paint and then to transmit it to others. But-- so I think if there had been another great painter among his students of his stature, his style of painting would have continued longer, but I'm sorry the other half of the equation is the revival of interest in [inaudible]. So, these two collided and that began in the 1920's, 1930's under Reza Shah and artists begin painting in the 17th century miniature style. So, you had these two competing currents going on for 20, 30 years and then, you know, abstract painting and cubism. So, his influence-- but I wanted to say that his influence was very strong. Let's look again at Heydarian. Let's look again at his other followers. That's very interesting. Yes. That's a very interesting kind of leap, but I would have to go back and see-- I don't remember [inaudible] speaking about Kamal al Mulk. Some of the artists did and there have been-- as part of the more recent literature, scholars have written about all these arguments about Kamal al Mulk and what he was responsible for, but I-- so, people like Marcos Grigorian wrote against Kamal al Mulk, you know, and others-- I mean huge battles that are all recorded really in Ahmad Ashraf's section of this article. So, I do think that there's a lot more to try and look at and I thank you for the reference to [inaudible] who's-- really was another landscape painter. One painter I studied very closely was Yektai and Yektai actually knew Kamal al Mulk and told me that he went with his mother to Kamal al Mulk's home. I mean there are amazing connections. So, hopefully for another time. >> Hirad Dinavari: Well, folks, it's getting a little late and most people have to go back to their work and offices. Again, thank you so much for making the trip, coming here, and visiting and giving this amazing-- ^M01:07:51 [ Applause ] ^M01:07:57 >> Layla Diba: Thank you to my wonderful audience and their questions. I loved it. >> Hirad Dinavari: Absolutely. >> Farah Pahlavi: And we're very proud of Layla. She's not like all Iranian Americans that are exiled here. She is really half-American half-Iranian and so the result has become very important for us in Iran before what happened and even now we're very proud of you. And also-- and I don't know if I have a few minutes for Negarestan. OK. Yeah, no, because Layla was the head of Negarestan Museum and-- no, sorry-- and the story of these other paintings is that there was a collection belonging to Mr. Amery [assumed spelling] in London and he proposed to us to sell 100 other paintings for $1 million. So, I asked the ministry of culture to send a few people to see if they're OK or not. It took so long that I heard that Amery gave it to [inaudible]. I was in Switzerland. When I heard that, I really cried. I had tears in my eyes. The head of my office was there. I said please go to them and tell them we cannot come to [inaudible] and still-- and one by one buy-- this is a museum and so and-- and thankfully Amery accepted and [inaudible] also. Of course, we had to pay a little more, so the Negarestan Museum was in an old palace which belonged to the queen mother in Tehran and Professor [inaudible], which was a Czech artist which had arranged every room for different paintings, portraits, landscape, and Layla fortunately was the curator and the-- it was a beautiful museum and when the famous revolution happened in Iran, these people made this museum the house of the guardians of the revolution as if there was no building in Tehran such ages ago. God knows where they have sent these paintings. Anyway, I wanted to say that about the [inaudible] and thank you, Layla, for what you have done and there are books published about those paintings. And thank you for-- ^M01:10:23 [ Applause ] ^M01:10:29 >> Layla Diba: I have a surprise. Yes. Well, it's been a great boon for me. If you remember, I kept saying I need to find the date of the inauguration of the museum and we asked the queen and we asked our friends, we asked other people, we couldn't-- nobody could remember, including me. I said, well, I think it's like June, July-- today, at the Library of Congress, in the microfilm department, I have found the front page of Keyhan International with your photograph with little me and Queen Sophia of Greece. April 13, 1975. ^M01:11:16 [ Applause ] ^M01:11:25 I was off by two months and then I kept saying, well, it's got to be earlier. It's got to be-- April 13. Actually, two days from now. You were in Tehran-- yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, we now know. >> Hirad Dinavari: Exactly. >> Farah Pahlavi: I have to tell you another story. >> Layla Diba: Please. >> Farah Pahlavi: Many years ago, of course, after what happened, they wrote in a French magazine that I have taken some of the jewels of the [inaudible] with me. I knew that it was enough to [inaudible] one of the newspapers in Iran that the direction of the [inaudible]. I asked a friend of mine and a member of my family to come to the Library of Congress find the article-- she did and she copied and I sent it back to the newspaper. So, thank you Library of Congress. >> Layla Diba: Thank you, Library of Congress. Thank you. >> Hirad Dinavari: You're very welcome. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thanks again, everyone, for coming. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.