Obituary: Jamshid MirFenderesky: Iranian Renaissance man, painter and classical guitarist who made Belfast his home
Born: March 16th 1947
Died: April 22nd 2026
Dr Jamshid MirFenderesky, who has died aged 79, was an Iranian art gallery owner, painter, poet, philosopher and classical guitarist, a true Renaissance man, who made Belfast his home but on his first arrival 56 years ago was baffled by the city.
His son Amir recounted how as a young man MirFenderesky travelled from Tehran to London planning to enrol at a UK university. When Queen’s University Belfast offered him a place, he flew over to assess whether he should take up the opportunity.
“I am not even sure if he knew where Belfast was,” said Amir. “He sat on the bus on his way into Belfast and listened intently to the driver talking to a local man. After five minutes he thought, ‘Oh my God, they don’t speak English here’.”
Not only did he adapt and come to love the city, but he figured it out as well. Rather like the Belfast poet WR Rodgers before him who referred to an “abrupt and angular people”, MirFenderesky in his poetry collection Fragments wrote, “Whatever I have and whatever I don’t have/Has something to do with this city/The City of Belfast, upright, stubborn, long story.”
As his friend, the lawyer and art collector Turlough Montague said, “He exchanged one troubled city for another and it seemed as though Belfast got into his very bones.”
MirFenderesky was born in Tehran in 1947. He trained in classical guitar and as a young man appeared on Iranian television. The Shah of Iran heard him perform and was so impressed that he instructed the Iranian ambassador in Madrid to source and buy the best guitar he could find.
The Shah personally presented MirFenderesky with a Ramírez guitar, a kind played by the like of Andres Segovia, George Harrison and Mark Knopfler.
He achieved a BA in Persian literature in Tehran, and gained a PhD at Queen’s in 1975. His subject was death.
He met his future wife, Angela Eastwood, in 1974. Their first encounter was when she was in a front seat of the audience at a classical guitar recital he delivered in Belfast. They married and moved to Iran, where he taught philosophy and the philosophy of art at university in Tehran from 1975 to 1980.
They returned to Belfast for the birth of their second child, and then planned to return to Tehran. But the war between Iran and Iraq broke out, prompting them to remain in Belfast, because it was deemed too dangerous to return.
Eastwood got a job teaching chemistry, while MirFenderesky taught classical guitar to a few students and gave some lectures on philosophy. In 1984, he took the leap of establishing the Fenderesky Gallery in Belfast.
It took courage and confidence to set up a gallery deep into the Northern Irish Troubles, yet MirFenderesky was successful without in any way compromising his principles
He promoted and encouraged a couple of generations of Irish artists such as Mickey Donnelly, Sharon Kelly, David Crone, Graham Gingles and Paddy McCann. He could be particular in his dealings. McCann recounted how MirFenderesky told him someone had come into his gallery and wanted to buy one of his (McCann’s) paintings. “But I told him not to,” said MirFenderesky. “I don’t think you’re ready for it.”
McCann, in his quizzical south Armagh way, asked him what was the purpose of a gallerist. “To present and sell good art,” said MirFenderesky. “Well, you’re good at the first part, but I’m not sure about the second,” McCann joked.
It took courage and confidence to set up a gallery deep into the Northern Irish Troubles, yet MirFenderesky was successful without in any way compromising his principles. “He was the only gallery-owner I know who never tried to sell you a painting,” said Turlough Montague, “yet somehow you often left the gallery with your bank book a little bit lighter.”
MirFenderesky believed many curators shied away from Irish artists, saying, “I personally get the same pleasure in looking at a good painting by Ciarán Lennon, Basil Blackshaw, David Crone and the like, as when I look at a good painting by Cy Twombly or Gerhard Richter.”
His gallery also became a sort of cultural and philosophical salon. As Montague recalled, “It became a hub on Friday and Saturday afternoons for a gathering of collectors and artists to gather over coffee and expound on art and on life. Jamshid gave us a sense that art could matter.”
MirFenderesky later in life struck up a perhaps unlikely friendship with the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Noel Treanor, engaging in learned conversations on subjects such as phenomenology and existentialism.
In his final days, he was troubled by the conflict in Iran. He also cast a cold eye on the Northern tribal conflict, telling Vera Ryan in her book on the Irish visual arts, Movers and Shapers, “I do not have nationalistic feelings and I was not carrying any cultural baggage with me. I don’t believe in either of them. Both nationalism and cultural traditions, as it were, create more problems than solve any.”
MirFenderesky viewed art appreciation as a personal affair. “When it hit you it is like the experience of intense desire or the experience of being in love. It is only in this sense that art can be life-enhancing. It is in this sense that, as Nietzsche put it, ‘art can save life’.”
He said, “St Augustine said that truth dwells in the inner man. I also believe that art dwells in the inner man, in the consciousness of people historically and in the consciousness of each individual.”
He was devoted to his wife and family. At his funeral service, his daughter Mariyam recalled being with him at the Ulster Museum cafe a week before his death. “We sat together with the grandchildren playing outside looking at the marvellous trees and we realised we were part of something much greater, something that would endure well beyond us, and in that we found comfort.”
MirFenderesky is survived by his wife Angela, children Mariyam and Amir, their partners Mahinda and Jane, grandchildren Henry, Dhilan, Mollie and Dara, and sister Talat.
