INDIA - probably Delhi, circa 1820 - Lot 328

INDIA - probably Delhi, circa 1820 Princely entertainment scene Pigments and gold on paper Page height: 24.4 cm Page width: 36.1 cm On a palace terrace, under a large canopy, a prince sits on a carpet, his back resting on a large cushion. He is smoking the huqqa, while behind him two women are fanning him with morchals. Beside him, a seated woman also smokes the huqqa, accompanied by an elderly woman. In the right-hand part of the scene, nautch dancers and musicians entertain the main character, who is the likely commissioner of the painting. Nautch dancers (from the word nach meaning dance in Bengali) are professional dancers, who during the Mughal and British periods were often invited to entertain at public audiences or private events. Several portraits of the same subject and style are known. One of the most famous, painted by the artist Mihr Chand, depicts Colonnel Polier entertained by nautchs (Lucknow, c. 1780, preserved in the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan, no. M.160). Like Polier, other Europeans took pleasure in immersing themselves in Indian culture, commissioning artists to paint portraits and scenes of entertainment, in which they can be seen dressed in Indian fashion. The unidentified notable in our painting could just as well be an Indian or a European dressed in Indian fashion. Two other known portraits show great stylistic similarities with our painting. Housed in the British Library (Add.Or.2 and Add.Or.1), the first depicts Sir David Ochterlony, and the second Mahadji Sindhia, accompanied by two British officers, attending a nautch show. These two paintings, attributed to the Delhi region around 1820, are published in: W. Dalrymple & Y. Sharma (2012), Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, Asia Society Museum & Yale University Press, pp.102-103, n°28 and 29. The very similar treatments of the dancers' faces, and of details such as the spittoons containing a rumal or the treatment of the earrings, lead us to believe that these two portraits and ours could be made by the same anonymous artist. (visible wear and tear)