A small group of bright and attractive watercolours by the Scottish artist Peter Macgregor Wilson, R.S.W. (c.1856-1928). Wilson undertook extensive periods of travel and spent time in Persia (modern-day Iran) during the final decade of the nineteenth century.
The five images here were all painted in different parts of Iran, showing the distance Wilson covered. There are: group portraits in the gardens of Shiraz and Isfahan; a gentle portrait of an Iranian woman, ‘Fatima’, in Tehran; a double-portrait of a man, ‘Abbas (surname indecipherable)’, in the port city of Bushire; a dramatic view of Hormuz Island from a boat in the Persian Gulf.
On first look, some of the titles (in addition to the somewhat illustrative style) - ‘Garden of Hadji Baba’ and ‘Island of Sinbad the Sailor’ - might suggest Wilson was not painting from life, but drawing from European descriptions and the orientalist visions they inspired. However, other details confirm he was working in Iran (not to mention the slightly clunky transliteration of his name into Farsi). The ms. caption to the Shiraz painting states the courtyard was in the ‘Bagh-i-no’ (New Garden), a garden built opposite the Bagh-e Jahan Nama, a famous and still-standing garden founded by Karim Khan Zand (c.1705-1779). Several nineteenth-century European travellers mention the New Garden, including Wills, Buckingham and Curzon. The latter describes it as “new about seventy years ago, when it was constructed, with the usual features of walks, canals, and cascades, by Husein Ali Mirza, Son of Fath Ali Shah”, and having “In one of its imarets … a portrait of the latter monarch, seated in state, and receiving the British Mission of Sir John Malcolm.” (Persia and the Persian Question, London, 1892, Vol.II, p.104.)
