watercolour and pencil on paper, mounted, old handwritten title pasted on the reverse of mount, 16.5 x 11.5cm

Provenance: Galerie Soustiel, Paris, 1985; Etienne Mercier, Paris: 'Le Colonel F. Colombari et autres voyageurs de l’Orient du XIXe au debut du XXe siècle', Salle Drouot, 19 June 1981

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, which suggests the double portrait was executed in late 1847 when both of them had just arrived in Tehran. Conrad Gustav Fagergren was a physician who after various adventures ended up in Persia, first working in Tehran for the Shah and then in Shiraz for the local governor. Joseph Gallup Cochran was a Presbyterian minister, sent as a missionary to Persia. Both men remained in the country for the rest of their lives. Franz Colombari was born to Austrian parents in Smyrna and after a military career, which he managed to combine with his artistic interests and friendships, he eventually moved to Paris where he spent the last decades of his life.