gouache and gold on paper, trimmed gold-sprinkled blue borders, English inscription verso Jane Plymley 1790 from Jonathan Scott Esq of Netley
260 x 380 mm.

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired by Jonathan Scott, secretary to Warren Hastings, before 1790.
Gifted by Jonathan Scott to Jane Plymley in 1790.

Jonathan Scott was a noted Orientalist, a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal and a friend of Warren Hastings. Born in Shrewsbury, he joined the army of the East India Company in 1770 and was appointed by Warren Hastings as his secretary from 1778. He returned to England before 1790, settling at Netley in Shropshire. In 1802 he was appointed as professor of Oriental Languages at the Royal Military College and later moved to the East India College at Haileybury. He published a number of important works on Indian and Persian history and literature, including Tales, Anecdotes and Letters Translated from the Arabic and Persian (1800), which he dedicated to Warren Hastings. He also made an early translation of the Arabian Nights, and died in 1829.

Jane Plymley was from a notable Shropshire family well-known at the time for their campaigns against poverty and slavery. Jane apparently starved herself to death out of guilt for the poor who could not afford to feed themselves (see Lesa Scholl, Hunger Movements in Early Victorian Literature, Abingdon 2016).

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- Islamic and Indian Art
- Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art

A prince observing an elephant fight from his palace with a large body of infantrymen outside the walls Provincial Mughal, circa 1780

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