Heuer, After Louis-François Aubry, Fathali Shah’s Ambassadors – Asghar Khan and Mirza Abul Hassan, Lithograph, Paris, ca.1821
11cm x 8.5cm (image)

Asghar Khan Afshar was a Persia ambassador who was sent to Paris, during the period of the
Franco-Persian alliance, formed between the French Empire of Napoleon I and Fathali Shah,
against the Russia and Great Britain from 1807 to 1809. While the Shah needed help against
the Russian menace on his northern frontier following the annexation of eastern Georgia in
1801, Napoleon was motivated by his long cherished dream of invading British India, using
Persia as both ally and a gateway, and joining forces with Tipu Sultan to expel the British.
Following the visit of the Iranian envoy Mirza Muhammad Reza Qazvini to the court of
Napoleon, then based on Tilsit in eastern Prussia, the alliance was formalised with the
Treaty of Finkenstein on 4 May 1807 and ratified a week later on 10 May. Asghar Khan
arrived in Paris on 20 July 1808 and met Napoleon on 4 September 1808 at Château de
Saint-Cloud (an event recorded in a drawing by Benjamin Zix). He left in April 1810, when
Persia had allied itself with Great Britain, then France’s enemy in the Napoleonic Wars.
Asghar Khan’s posting in Paris partly coincided with that of the Ottoman Empire
ambassador Muhib Efendi. In 1817, Asghar Khan was appointed to be a mehmandar (i.e.
official guide) of the Russian embassy to Persia headed by general Aleksey Petrovich
Yermolov, which Tsar Alexander I had sent to Persia to inform Fathali Shah why Russia
would not fulfill the promise that Alexander I had made to Fathali Shah to restore to Persia
part of the territories acquired by Russia in the Treaty of Gulistan of 1813. An oil portrait of
Asghar Khan by Cesarin Davin-Mirvault is at the Château de Versailles.
Nothing is known of the lithographer Heuer. He is not the German lithographer Christian
Ludwig Wilhelm Heuer who was born in 1813, only 8 years before this lithograph was made.
Louis-François Aubry was born at Paris on 27 February 1767 and died at Batignolles on 16
June 1851. He was educated at the Pension des Arts from 1784 to 1791 and was later a
student of François-André Vincent and Jean-Baptiste Isabey. Aubry became a famous
portrait painter, best known for his miniature paintings. He exhibited his paintings at the
Salon de Peinture et de Sculpture from 1798 to 1833, where he came to the attention and
gained the favour of the family of Napoleon I. The portraits of the King of Westfalia Jérôme
Bonaparte and the Borghese princess Pauline Bonaparte, and other portraits of members of
Napoleon’s family are now in the Wallace Collection in London. As a result of this royal
patronage, the list of his clients included many members of the aristocracy. He was named a
Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on 15 January 1832. His portrait of Asghar Khan was
painted in 1809.

Dimensions: 11cm x 8.5cm (image)