A KING TALKING TO A DIGNITARY, BY HOSSEIN BEHZAD, PARIS OR TEHRAN, CIRCA 1930

Hossein Behzad (d.1968) moved to Paris in 1934 where he stayed a little over a year to study different schools of painting. It was during his residency in France that he developed a new style of painting, combining the traditional Safavid style with more contemporary aspects. His works have been exhibited all over the world, including Iran (in the Iran Bastan Museum, 1953 on the occasion of the millennium of Ibn Sina); France (the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 1955); The United States of America (the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 1956), and Finland (the Olympic Painting Exhibition, Helsinki, 1952).

Some illustrations from the same manuscript were published in 1997 in a special edition of Dossier de l’Art dedicated to Persian painting, (Dossier de l’Art, La Peinture Persane, No.36, March 1997, pp.7, 70, 72, 73). Others were sold at Christie's London, 11 October 2005, lot 139; 31 October 2007, lot 73 and lot 74, 27 April 2017, lot 134 and most recently at Sotheby’s London, 23 October 2019, lot 172.