Drawing on paper, tinted and coloured with watercolours. Depicts a customer seated on a stool adjacent to a seller of bells who is seated on a mat and rigning one of the bells. Mounted in a pair in a cardboard frame.
This painting is one of a series of watercolours which depict scenes that are well known in nineteenth century Persian painting and commercial photography. Judging by the fashions worn by the painting’s subjects they were probably painted between 1850 and 1875, quite possibly for sale to tourists. This examples shows a patron and a stall holder who is selling bells. The larger bells could be rung to structure training for zurkhaneh wrestling. Comparable bazaar scenes are illustrated in Henry Ballantine’s ‘Midnight Marches Through Persia’ (1879). The most applicable plate is ‘A Persian Bazar, Ispahan [sic]’ (p162).
