This work is definitively the most important carpet among the Lehman Indo-Persian group. In spite of (or perhaps aided by) reknotting, it is extremely attractive, exhibits good color, and is in very presentable condition. It has an appealing and relatively unusual pattern, with staggered rows of large lobed medallions. The central row has complete medallions, whereas those of the two outer rows have been cut in half by the borders. The rug is enormous, at a length of 11.2 meters. It was greatly admired by the well-known Persian art impresario Arthur Upham Pope, who published it in his A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present (1938 – 39) and then included it in the vast exhibition of Persian art held in New York in 1940. The work is one of a limited number of Indo-Persian carpets to survive as a pair. The mate, part of a private collection in Europe since the late 1960s, formerly belonged to the maharaja of Jaipur, where it was photographed and recorded in 1929.(1) At that time, attached to it was an inventory label recording its receipt in 1689. The presence of several other Indo-Persian and Indian carpet pairs in the Jaipur holdings suggests that the Lehman work was likely also part of that collection, but if so, it had already left by 1929, as it was not listed in the inventory taken in that year. Confirmed by the inventory information, the carpet has several features indicating a date of manufacture in the second half of the seventeenth century. The lobed medallions hark back to those found in a few earlier rugs of the Herat class that preceded this one, but the medallion form coupled with the interior pattern of cloud bands and forked leaves is very close to those in a fragmentary carpet dated 1656 and long ago recorded in the Ethnographic Museum in Sarajevo.(2) The beautiful border design of palmettes flanked by forked leaves is matched by that of another Indo-Persian carpet in Jaipur, purchased in 1667.(3) An additional feature of late production seems to be the rococo effect created by the exaggerated and rather graceless serrated leaves that grope like crossed arms along the sides of the field. Other Indo-Persian works featuring prominent medallions include the one with lobed varieties in the City Palace Museum in Jaipur, acquired as a “foreign carpet” in 1667;(4) one with a huge diamond-shaped medallion with serrated edges in Jaipur in the collection of the former maharaja, also brought in as a “foreign carpet” in 1689;(5) a pair of immense carpets, more than 16 meters long, with similar diamond-shaped medallions, last seen some years ago in the banquet hall of the City Palace, Jaipur;(6) a carpet with strap arabesques and a modest central medallion, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;(7) and one with staggered rows of two medallion types that was sold at auction in London in 1993.(8)
Catalogue entry from Daniel Walker. The Robert Collection. Decorative Arts, Volume XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 380-382.
NOTES: 1. A. J. D. Campbell, “Report to the President and Members of the Jaipur Council," 1929, no. 133 (report on deposit in the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). 2. Pope, Arthur Upham. A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present. 9 vols. London, 1938 – 39, vol. 3, pl. 1238. 3. Campbell, “Report to the Jaipur Council,” no. 45. The carpet is now in the City Palace Museum, Jaipur, C-6. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., no. 43. 6. Ibid., nos. 7, 8. 7. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., C-329 (Torchia, Robert Wilson. “Widener’s Gift.” Hali, no. 92 (May), 1997, p. 95). 8. Sale, Christie's, London, 11 November 1993, lot 106.
Probably maharaja of Jaipur, from 1689, until before 1929; [Dikran Kelekian, New York]; [Duveen Brothers, New York]; Genevieve Garvan Brady; Brady sale, American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, New York, 10-15 May 1937, lot 2018, ill. (sale held at the Brady estate, Inisfada, in Manhasset, New York); [French & Company, New York]. Acquired by Robert Lehman through French & Company in July 1937.
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The Robert Lehman Collection is one of the most distinguished privately assembled art collections in the United States. Robert Lehman's bequest to The Met is a remarkable example of twentieth-century American collecting.
