Watercolour, `Meidan-i-Chah ou Place Royale, Ispahan', 1841, by Eugène-Napoléon Flandin

Watercolour drawing

Purchased with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund, Shell International and the Friends of the V&A

According to Rodney Searight: - `Acquired [via T. Crenshaw] from Fred Strasser, Galérie de Paris, Grand Rue, Geneva on 11th October 1976.'

A version of the lithograph (by Flandin) titled as above, in Flandin & Coste, Voyage en Perse. Perse Moderne, Pl.LIV. This shows a similar view to a drawing (pencil, heightened with white), titled and dated Maidan Shah - Ispahan - 13 [Juin ?] 1840, in VAM, DPD (D.406-1897). Flandin was in Isfahan in April-May and August 1840 and in February-March 1841. The wide expanse of the Maydan was created as a polo ground by Shah Abbas soon after he moved his capital to Ispahan in the early 1600s. On the far side is the Masjid-i-Shah, the mosque of the Shah. The alignment of the building, at an angle to the entrance portal, was to ensure the correct orientation of the building towards Mecca, On the right is the Ali Qapu, the gate house of the palace complex, with its enormous wooden loggia projecting over the square from which the royal family could view the ceremonies and sporting events taking place below. For a description of the Maydan see Flandin & Coste, Voyage en Perse ... Relation de Voyage, 1851, Vol.I, pp.340-50. A similar view was published by Coste in his publication, Monuments Modernes de la Perse, Paris, 1867, Pl.VI-VII. Another view of the Maydan was the subject of an oil by Flandin, exhibited at the Salon in 1853.

The wide expanse of the Maydan was created as a polo ground by Shah Abbas soon after he moved his capital to Ispahan in the early 1600s. On the far side is the Masjid-i-Shah, the mosque of the Shah. The alignment of the building, at an angle to the entrance portal, was to ensure the correct orientation of the building towards Mecca, On the right is the Ali Qapu, the gate house of the palace complex, with its enormous wooden loggia projecting over the square from which the royal family could view the ceremonies and sporting events taking place below.

Flandin was in Ispahan in 1841 while taking part in a French diplomatic mission led by Edouard de Sercey to the Shah of Persia. He and his fellow artist Pascal Coste were employed to record Persia’s ancient and Islamic monuments, and after their return to France they published jointly eight volumes of text and plates entitled Voyage en Perse. Flandin had also travelled in Algeria in 1837, accompanying a military campaign by the French as they continued with their war of colonisation, and Flandin eventually published his book Algérie historique, pittoresque et monumentale in 1843.

SD.382