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From the book “The Consolation of Objects“:

The source of the happy girl on the swing is a miniature created in the nineteenth century under the Qajar dynasty. The Qajar miniatures evolved from the encounter of Iranian miniatures with Western art, and perhaps for this very reason they appear more childlike and naïve compared to the earlier Safavid or Herat miniatures, which is probably due to the fact that the Qajar artists, on the one hand, gradually abandoned their mastery of the old style under Western influence and ventured into Western themes such as perspective and portraiture, but on the other hand, had not yet sufficiently mastered Western technique. This childish deficiency, however, is not a real one.

In this Dadaist collage, in my opinion, the colorful, cheerful garden of Antoine Watteau’s (1684–1721) Fêtes galantes, situated between Baroque and Rococo, again enters into a beautiful harmony with the Qajarian melancholy. Adding to this impression is the fact that the happily smiling girl on the swing seems content with her new surroundings. Similarly confident, with the patience of an Islamic miniaturist, I have written on the sheets colored by Watteau what simply came to me on the subject of a country outing and love.