
Deborah Cliffe
Senior Sale Coordinator
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Sold for £6,500 inc. premium
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Senior Sale Coordinator
PROVENANCE:
with The Fine Art Society Ltd., April 1972
Rudolf Swoboda the younger (1859-1914) was born in Vienna. In his early career he studied under Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892), and the pair travelled to Egypt together in 1880.
In 1885, Queen Victoria commissioned the artist to paint a series of portraits of Indian people and other British colonial subjects for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886. He later travelled to the Indian sub-continent at Queen Victoria's request to produce sketches of the local population. Among his subjects were Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, with occupations ranging from military officers to snake charmers and jugglers. Swoboda's portraits describe the diversity of Indian society in finely observed detail.