Young Man with a Falcon
Sheet: 13 x 9 inches (33.02 x 22.86 cm)
International Exhibition of Persian Art, London, Royal Academy, January 7-February 28, 1931, no. 169 [586] as Calligraphic Drawing. (Note: 169 is the catalog number; 586 is the exhibition number.)
Exhibition of Persian Art, The Iranian Institute, New York, April 15-May 15, 1940, gallery 7, case 84, no. E as Man with a Falcon.
Paul Gauguin: His Place in the Meeting of East and West, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 27-April 25, 1954, no. 73 as Portrait of a Young Man with a Falcon.
Islamic Painting from American Collections, The School of Art and The Department of Religion, Syracuse University, April 6-26, 1967, no. 81.
With Edward L. Beghian (1877-1962), London, by 1931 [1];
With Hagop Kevorkian (1872-1962), New York, by 1940-1943;
Purchased from Hagop Kevorkian by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1943.
[1] Edward L. Beghian owned a gallery in London, which appears active between 1924 and 1939, possibly earlier and later. (London phone directory records 1924-1939 available on Ancestry.com). Mr. Beghian also advertised his gallery in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. See v. 49, no. 285 (December 1926); v. 50, no. 288 (March 1927); v. 50, no. 289 (April 1927); v. 50, no. 290 (May 1927); v. 51, no. 292 (July 1927); v. 51, no. 297 (December 1927); v. 54, no. 314 (May 1929); v. 54, no. 315 (June 1929); v. 55, no. 316 (July 1929); v. 58, no. 334 (January 1931). It appears that Mr. Beghian specialized in carpets and antiques from the East.
Mr. Beghian was married to Nouvart Beghian (1895-1982) who lived in London until her death. They had two sons, Stephen (1917-1992) and Leon E. (1919-2008). Leon E. Beghian served in the Royal Navy during WWII and earned a Ph.D. in Physics after the war. He later taught at MIT and established residency in the United States.
At this time, it is not possible to pinpoint exactly when Hagop Kevorkian purchased this painting from Mr. Beghian. We do know that the sale occurred in the 1930’s and involved travel from Great Britain to the United States by 1940. No evidence indicates that this painting entered the mainland of Europe in the years leading up to WWII. As a side note, because of their shared professional interests, it is very likely that Mr. Kevorkian and Mr. Beghian were business colleagues.
“Persian Painting: An Art Whose History is Far from Complete” in The Illustrated London News (January 3, 1931): II, (repro.).
Laurence Binson, J. V. S. Wilkinson, and Basil Gray, Persian Miniature Painting including a Critical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Miniatures Exhibited at Burlington House January-March, 1931 (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 138.
Phyllis Ackerman, Guide to the Exhibition of Persian Art, exh. cat. (New York: The Iranian Institute, 1940), 197.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 177, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 250-51, (repro.).
Laurence Binyon, J. V. S. Wilkinson, and Basil Gray, Persian Miniature Painting Including a Critical and Descriptive Catalogue of the Miniatures Exhibited at Burlington House January-March, 1931, exh. cat. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971), 138.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 2, Art of the Orient, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 165, (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 404, (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 30, fig. 22, (repro.).
