Lot 28: - Three dervishes conversing in a landscape, signed by Muhammad Qasim (d.1659), Persia, Isfahan, circa 1630-50

Ink and pencil heightened with blue and red on paper, depicting three figures sitting around a brazier within a grassy landscape with rabbits, laid down on an album page, the artist's signature on the bottle in the lower middle ground, ruled in gold

measurements note 19 by 12cm.

Muhammad Qasim was one of the leading artists of the first generation after Reza-i Abbasi alongside Muhammad Yusuf, Muhammad Ali and Muhammad Muhsin. This charming miniature can be compared to a similar composition from this school sold in these rooms 30 April 2003, lot 33. The treatment of the sky in this painting, however, is comparable to another miniature painting by Qasim sold in Sotheby's New York 14 December 1979, lot 288, whilst a further work by the artist was exhibited in Le Chant du Monde, L'Art de l'Iran Safavide 1501-1736, Paris, 2007 (see Melikian-Chirvani 2007, pp.270-1). Drawings and paintings of dervishes such as the present example were particularly popular in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, often being collected in albums.