The Study of Themes and Visual Conventions of Illustrated Lithography and Cafe Painting of Qajar Time

Illustrated lithography and cafe painting are the artistic genres related to the Qajar time which resulted from political and social developments and egression of artists from court monopoly and entering of art and artistic works in the public. This time, visualization was carried out according to the new method and artistic facilities and, as always, in connection with Persian classic literature. Their themes were religious and epic themes and, sometimes, romances that showed the taste and beliefs of the public. Using comparative-analytical method, this paper investigates the themes and visual conventions of a number of samples of available artworks in order to understand the visual characteristics of illustrated lithography and the cafe painting and their relationship. Moreover, it tries to answer the following questions: What similarities and differences are there between these two types of painting and how did they influence each other?The attempts of this paper to study comparatively the themes and images in lithography and cafe painting of Qajar time and how cafe painting affected lithography works led to the conclusion that inspiration source of both kinds of painters in Qajar time was the same and the distribution and prevalence of lithography works is one of the factors which triggered the development of visual arts in the middle of Qajar reign because other artists could access such works easily and they influenced many arts like café painting in spite of different style, manner of implementation and technical tools via content proximity and, consequently, common visual elements.The pictures of lithography works and compared paintings are outstanding samples that obviously prove the influence of lithography works’ visualization methods on cafe painting. This study is descriptive-analytical regarding nature and method, and data gathering has been done via library, documental (visual) and observational methods.