"His Royal Highness is very pleased to sign the picture"
Printed colour portrait signed.
Colour print, 270 x 180 mm. Matted and framed, 465 x 382 mm. Signed in brown ink and dated. With 1 p. autograph letter attached to the reverse of the frame.
€ 15,000.00
Signed by Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, future King of Saudi Arabia, when he was only twenty-six years old. Faisal's autograph, dated in the same hand, is inked in the margin of a colour-printed full length print of Faisal by Sphinx, published by the Whitehall Gazette. Attached to the reverse of the frame is a letter on the stationery of the Royal Legation of Hedjaz & Nejd, London, which explains how Faisal came to sign this British portrait of himself: "My Dear Colleague, I must thank you for your very kind letter of the 10th which I submitted to His Royal Highness the Ameer Feisal. His Royal Highness is very pleased to sign the picture and put the date of today on it. He wishes me to express to Your Excellency his great pleasure at meeting you and Mlle Paravicini". The recipient, then, was C. R. Paravicini, Swiss Minister at the Court of St James's from 1920 to 1939. By the 1930s, and before his own 30th birthday, Faisal was already a household name in European and especially British political circles. The third son of King Abdulaziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, by 1932 Faisal was Viceroy of Hejaz and the Saudi foreign minister, and in that same year visited France, Poland, Turkey, and Iran.
With an autograph letter sent from the Royal Legation of Hejaz and Nejd in London, affixed on the verso, revealing that the signatures were requested by the Swiss diplomat Charles Rudolph Paravicini (1872-1949), Swiss ambassador in London from 1920 to 1939.
Signature very slightly faded; in excellent condition.
