Franz Colombari (Italian, 1813-1876), “Un suédois et un américain de passage à Téhéran”, circa 1847, gouache on paper, mounted, 16.5 x 11.5 cm.Provenance: Jean Soustiel, Paris, 1985.Published: Etienne Mercier – Le Colonel F. Colombari et autres voyageurs de l’Orient du XIXe au debut du XXe siècle. Salle 12 – 19 June 1981 (Drouot auction catalogue).F. Colombari was an Italian officer and painter who served at the Qajar Iranian court and in the army between 1833 and 1848.While Colombari himself did not identify the sitters in his inscription, they have since been identified as the Swedish physician Dr Conrad Gustav Fagergren and the American missionary Joseph Gallup Cochran. The painting would have been made in late 1847 when both of them had just arrived in Tehran.Joseph Gallup Cochran, a Presbyterian minister, was born in 1817 at Springville (NY). He graduated from Amherst College in 1842, and from Union Theological Seminary in 1847; was ordained June 10 of the same year and commissioned by the Presbyterian Board as a missionary to Persia, where he arrived in late 1847 with his wife Deborah Plum and his young family. They settled in Urmia in West Azerbaijan in Persia, home of one of the earliest Christian churches, the Assyrian Church of the East. The family devoted their missionary zeal to the welfare of the local population, many of whom were devout Christians. Except for a visit to the USA from 1865 to 1867 for the purpose of enrolling their children in schools, the Cochrans lived in Persia for the rest of their lives. Cochran died in Urmia in 1871 and his wife continued to run the mission. She was joined in 1878 by their son Joseph Plum Cochran, who was trained as a physician, who in addition to running the mission set up a hospital and Persia’s first medical school.Conrad Gustav Fagergren was born in 1818 at Stockholm and died in 1879 at Shiraz. While he initially trained as a barber-surgeon, he later studied medicine in Stockholm and travelled in Europe, eventually enrolling in Russian military service. While with an army corps in Circassia, he was captured but escaped to Istanbul and became captain surgeon in the Turkish army. He proceeded to Persia, arriving in Tehran in 1847, where he attracted the favour of Mohammad Shah, but after the shah’s death in 1848 he moved to Shiraz, where he served as physician and medical officer to the governor. He remained in Shiraz for the rest of his life.Franz Colombari was born ca. 1813 in Izmir(Ottoman Empire) and died ca. 1876 in Paris. He was the son of Anna Hafner (a working woman from Kaerten in Austria), and an inn-keeper in Izmir named Colombari (from Treviso which was part of the Austrian Empire at that time), whom Anna Hafner had met while visiting her sister in Izmir. Franz Colombari’s father passed away when he was two years old and his mother re-married, this time to a man from the Piemont region named Fornaris. Colombari moved with his mother and step-father first to Austria and then to Corfu, Izmir, and Constantinople, always in search of work. He also lived at times with his aunt in Izmir and is known to have lived in Bologna ca. 1830, after which the family moves to Tabriz where according to his mother’s published travel account, he enters the services of a Russian diplomat. The travel account also reports on Colombari’s language and painting training and skills, but never mentions any military training or experience. The Russian diplomat introduces Colombari in 1833 to Qahreman Mirza, son of Abbas Mirza (Crown Prince and Governor of Azerbaijan), who employs Colombari for his plans to reorganize the Azerbaijan army. With Abbas Mirza’s death within a few months, and FathaliShah’s passing a year later, the plans for reorganizing the Azerbaijan army are no longer a priority and Qahreman Mirza introducesColombari to his brother Mohammad Shah who had ascended to the Qajar throne. Mohammad Shah gradually transfers all responsibilities for the army to his chief minister, Haji Mirza Aqasi, who developed his own plans for military reform. Most of his energy being spent on reviving the camel-mounted artillery and production of weapons at the Tehran arsenal. Colombari developed a close relationship with Haji Mirza Aqasi and played an important role in executing the chief minister’s plans for the army. He was promoted to the rank of Colonel and continued to rise in the ranks of the Persian army, in spite of the fact that he has neither any military experience nor training. During his stay in Persia he develops a close friendship with Leon Labat, the personal physician of Mohammad Shah, and his wife Laure, and the many European and Russian artists who passed through or lived in Persia and who were in the circle of artists close to the young crown prince (the future Naser al-Din Shah). He made a watercolour painting of the crown prince in 1844, and one of Mohammad Shah in 1847. His military career in Persia came to an end in 1848 when Mohammad Shah passed away and Haji Mirza Aqasi lost his position, at which time Colombari moves to Paris. In Paris he re-establishes his friendships with the artists he had met in Persia and marries the now widowed Laure Labat. During his time in Persia Colombari always tried to hide his humble Austrian origins and presented himself as a Frenchman, and in particular tried to disassociate himself from his mother whose lifestyle and reputation were not in line with the image that he had created for himself. This proved to be complicated at times because his mother was a frequent visitor to Persia, owned a house in Tehran, and was known to the French, German, and English expatriate community.Please refer to department for condition report