Footnotes

• Provenance:
  Formerly in the collection of Joy Dow, who acquired them (according to a note on the backboard of one painting) from Hamilton's Jewellers, Calcutta, in 1967.
  
  Guru Nanak travelled throughout India and elsewhere for 24 years, spreading his message. In one of the scenes the Guru is depicted at Mecca (in the course of a journey through the Middle East made between 1517-22) being rebuked by an imam for lying with his feet facing the Qa'ba. The Guru asked to be moved so that he faced the place where there was no God; at each attempt he found that he was still facing the Qa'ba; thus the story illustrates how God is everywhere.
  
  A second painting shows Guru Nanak at Sikkim near Tibet. The story relates that the Guru planted his staff in the ground and it transformed itself into a tree. At the same place he is also said to have battled with two demons, the footprints from which struggle are supposed to remain imprinted on the rock. It is also said that the Chinese word for the location, Chungthang, derived from the Punjabi, Changa sthan or good place, which Guru Nanak had bestowed on it.
  
  The two other scenes depict the Guru in a landscape with his faithful attendant Mardana; and standing with a devotee in a landscape.
  
  For a similar depiction of the Guru at Mecca, see Christie's, Islamic and Indian Manuscripts and Works on Paper, 23rd April 2012, lot 319; and see the following lot in that sale (320) depicting two further similar paintings.

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Category: Islamic and Oriental Art / Islamic and Indian Art

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