In the later 19th century, some Qajar artists began to imitate the art of the Safavid period. In ceramics, Qajar potters, such as Ali Muhammad Isfahani, copied the colourful monumental seventeenth-century tile panels that decorated palaces in Isfahan. Many of these included elegant courtiers drinking wine in lush gardens (see for example V&A 139-1891). This single tile reproduces one of these multi-tiled picnic scenes. The composition is centered on a pair of figures, a young man in seventeenth-century style costume wearing a European hat and cloak, and a young woman reclining in an elaborate robe and scarf. Before them are wine bottles and glasses, bowls of fruit are being offered to them by attendants.
This tile was commissioned around 1884-5, by a French composer of military music, Alfred Lemaire (1842-1907). From 1868, he was working at Tehran's Dar al Funun polytechnical college, training the staff to teach music; he later composed Iran's first national anthem. The tile is part of a fireplace surround (see 510, 511, 512 & 522-1889).