English: A COURTING COUPLE

BY MIRZA BABA AL-HUSAYNI, QAJAR IRAN, DATED AH 1271/1854-5 AD

Gouache on paper, the young couple fashionably dressed in embroidered coats, he in tall black cap, she with bejewelled headpiece and holding a glass cup, signed, slight creasing and flaking, laid down on board 11 3/8 x 7 7/8in. (28.8 x 20cm.)

Mirza Baba al-Husayni al-Imami was a painter of the Imami school, known chiefly for their work on papier mache objects. An example of one executed by this artist is in the Khalili Collection, illustrated in Nasser D. Khalili, B.W. Robinson and Tim Stanley, Lacquer of the Islamic Lands Part II, Oxford, 1997, cat.291, p.91.