Opium eaters chasing a mouse

Mughal, perhaps Oudh, late 18th Century

Footnotes

Provenance
Formerly in the collection of Ludwig Habighorst.
With Simon Ray, London, 2008.

Published
L. V. Habighorst, 'Caricature and satire in Indian miniature painting', in Indian Satire in the Period of First Modernity, eds Monika Horstmann and Heidi Pauwels, Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 117–32, fig. 9 (as Ajmer, circa 1730–50).

Exhibited
Genuss und Rausch: Betel, Tabak, Wein, Hasch und Opium in der indischen Malerei, Museum Rietberg, Zürich, 2010.
Genuss und Rausch: Wein, Tabak und Drogen in indischen Miniaturen, Museum für Islamische Kunst, Pergamonmuseum, Berlin 2014.
J. P. Losty, Indian Paintings from the Ludwig Habighorst Collection,
Francesca Galloway, London 2018, cat. 27.

The Urdu inscription is translated as follows: 'An example of the state of Asaf al-Daula's army. On the appearance of a mouse, they imagine it to be a lion and in a panic the opium-addicts take up their weapons, but straight away go into a stupor!'

What appears to be a comic depiction of the effects opium and bhang can also, on the strength of the inscription, be read as a satirical barb aimed at Asaf al-Daula, Nawab of Awadh (reg. 1775–97). Renowned for his architectural projects in beautifying Lucknow and for his love of the arts, what little talent for government he possessed was undermined by the persistent attempts of the East India Company to render Awadh a compliant vassal state. Its army was consistently reduced so that Awadh could never again pose a threat to the Company's armies as it had done in the reign of his father Shuja' al-Daula.

The subject was more generally popular in the 19th Century. A painting, attributed to Jaipur or Mewar, circa 1840, now in the Alice Boner Collection in the Rietberg Museum, Zürich, appears to be derived from our miniature or its source, making use of the same figures, but reverses the composition and includes a suggestion of earth and sky (Boner et al. 1994, fig. 199; Habighorst et al. 2007b, fig. 74). This caricature of the effects of opium or bhang, showing how addicts become divorced from reality in their attempted assaults on the mouse, occurs several times in different late Rajasthani schools including Jodhpur (Palace Museum: see R. Crill, Marwar Painting: a History of the Jodhpur Style, Bombay 2000, fig. 120; p. 121 with other references) and Kotah (J. P. Losty, Indian Miniatures from the James Ivory Collection, Francesca Galloway, London 2010, no.22). An example of the same subject, Rajasthan, late 18th Century, was in the collection of Stuart Cary Welch: see Sotheby's, Part Two: Arts of India, 31st May 2011, lot 27.