Drawing on paper, tinted and coloured with watercolour paints. Depicts two veiled women passing a stall selling liquid or possibly sherbert from glass carafes, manned by a male adult on the right and a boy on the left. The women are wearing white runband face veils over their chadors. 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 example shows a stall holder and his assistant, perhaps selling sherbert. Two women wearing white runband face veils over their chadors approach the stall holders. 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).
