Mohammad Ghaffari known as Kamal al-Mulk
The great contemporary painter of Iran opened his eyes to the world in the first years of the
reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in an old dynasty, an artist and famous Kashan.
Mohammad Ghaffari's primary education took place in the school or schools of his hometown,
Kashan. Mohammad Ghafari's father, who was also a painter like his fathers, after his son
Mohammad graduated from elementary school, sent him to Tehran with his other son, Abu Torab,
who was three years older than his brother.
Mohammad and Abu Torab achieved great success during their 3 years of studying at Dar al-Funun
in the field of painting.
One day, while visiting this school, Naser al-Din Shah saw a painting that Mohammad Ghafari
had drawn of the face of Prince "Itzad al-Sultaneh", the director of Dar al-Funun, and he
was deeply impressed by the beauty of the painting and its great resemblance to the face of
the school principal, and as a result, he knew the identity of the painter. Tablo was asked,
he was introduced. Naser al-Din Shah called him and ordered that one of the halls of Golestan
Palace should be given to him as a house painter and that he should be appointed as a house painter.
Since then, the star of this young man's luck has steadily risen to the top. At first, he was
given the title (Khan) and a special waiter, but after a while, he was promoted to the
position of a painter, and his works attracted the praise of everyone more and more every day,
to the extent that the ruler of Qajar himself accepted the master's apprenticeship and He made
him proud with the title of Kamal-ol-Molk, and in order to complete his previous knowledge
and skills in painting, he studied with him for hours every day.
The daily and continuous contacts between Kamal al-Mulk as a teacher on one hand and the ruler
of the country in the name of art student on the other hand caused the relationship of service
and godliness to give way to that of teacher and student and a kind of friendship and camaraderie
emerged between the two. come During this period, Kamal al-Mulk painted more than 170 paintings,
the most famous of which is "Hall of Mirrors" and it is the first painting that bears the painter's
signature.
Kamal-ul-Mulk's happiness and happiness by finding a desired wife (Miftah-ul-Mulk's sister)
and the warming of his family's environment with the birth of a beautiful daughter were among
the other sources of his happiness and happiness, but since "treasures and snakes, flowers
and thorns, sadness and happiness" In the same way, the incident of the death of his
twenty-eight-year-old brother, Abu Torab, who was also his friend, caused the young painter to experience deep
suffering and sadness.
Another unfortunate event that darkened the world in the eyes of Kamal al-Mulk and made life
dark for him was the incident of stealing some gold and jewels from the Peacock Throne. It was
Golestan. This article caused Kamal al-Mulk to become suspicious and after being summoned by
the investigating officer, he was interrogated for four hours.
Although the main thief was arrested and announced, the bitter memory of this incident
remained forever in the mind of the great and pure painter.
After the death of Naser al-Din Shah and at the beginning of the reign of Muzaffar al-Din Shah, Kamal al-Mulk went to European countries by obtaining permission from him to continue his studies in the field of French and study painting, as well as visiting museums. He spent three years in Italy and France and a short time in Austria.
Kamal al-Mulk's arrival in Tehran on his return from Europe coincided with the constitutional
revolution and he expressed his faith in the new movement by publishing articles and
translations of the works of (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and other French freedom-loving writers.
With the beginning of the Pahlavi dynasty, Kamal al-Mulk went to one of the villages of
Nishabur (or was exiled), but he himself wrote somewhere: to forget
Many people made their way to see this great teacher in the village of Hossein Abad Neishabur.
Mohammad Hossein Shahryar, a well-known contemporary poet who was a guest of Kamal al-Mulk for
some time with his friends, spoke of the great love of the master. Many Iranian and foreign
scholars, intellectuals and researchers, such as the European orientalist "Henry Masse"
(French Iranian scholar), have enthusiastically traveled the same dirt road of Hossein Abad Neishabour.
Among the pains, sufferings and injuries that Kamal-ul-Mulk suffered during his long life,
none of them hurt him as much as the damage to one of his springs and hurt the nation.
The pain of being deaf, the great genius of music (Beethun).