Partly colored drawing pasted on an album leaf. ‘A Standing Dervish.’ Signed Muhsin

Very few works of art are known to have been made by Muhammad Muhsin, one of the many Persian artists who followed the style of Riza-i Abbasi.

The depiction of the quaint old dervish has humoristic undertones, and both the painstakingly drawn face and the calligraphically composed turban are of good quality. Muhsin’s drawings often have a solitary tree in the background, and the sky often features the jagged clouds of the traditional type with roots in Chinese art.