Persian Nightingales

Enjoy this vibrant, abstract 1917 artwork by Swiss artist Paul Klee on a range of gifts for her and gifts for him: homeware including mugs, wall art, tote bags, phone and tablet cases, coasters and placemats, and more.

This beautiful artwork by Klee likely alludes to the verses of the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz.

Mortal never won to view thee, Yet a thousand lovers woo thee; Not a nightingale but knows In the rose-bud sleeps the rose.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe introduced the Persian writer to Germanspeaking audiences in his West-östlicher Divan, and it was probably here that Klee first learned of Hafiz's work. In sensuous poetic images, the Persian master celebrates the joys of love, wine, and the natural world. Two of his recurring motifs are the nightingale and the rose, the former symbolizing earthly yearning, and the latter divine beauty and glory.

A pink rose appears in the lower left quadrant of Klee's watercolour, cradled by two sharply pointed leaves whose forms mirror the nightingales' heads. Above and to the left of the flower is the letter R (presumably for Rose ). Three nightingales occupy centre stage, and one of them is inverted and drunk with desire, its beak pointing toward the letter N (presumably for Nachtigallen). Celestial bodies float across the sheet, enlivening it with circles, halfmoons, and stars, while on the N's right stem Klee hoists a bright red pennant.

This radiant watercolour reflects in miniature a wondrous, microcosmic universe, one that even grants status to lowly consonants. Indeed, the letters R and N are fully integrated within the composition; they are scaled to the size of the nightingales and juxtaposed in the same indeterminate space. As is often the case in Persian art and particularly in Hafiz's poetry, the earthly and the divine are poised in a delicate and ambiguous balance. Individual shapes shift one against the other, each within the confines of Klee's wiry line and each flooded with thin washes of colour. Although perfectly balanced for the moment, one senses that a tiny slip of a line in one direction or another might set the whole creation tumbling.

Medium: gouache, watercolor, and pen and black ink over graphite on laid paper, mounted on cardboard; the sheet bordered at the top with yellow paper strip mounted to support

Credit: Gift of Catherine Gamble Curran and Family, in Honour of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art.