
Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator


Sold for £7,040 inc. premium
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Senior Sale Coordinator

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The painting can be situated in the milieu of Delhi artists working mostly for the British in the first part of the 19th Century. Comparison can be made with paintings in the 'Delhi Book' of Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe (1795-1853), the British Agent of the Governor-General in Delhi, which have the same graduated grey background. Compare in particular a oval portrait of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah II, circle of Ghulam 'Ali Khan, 1844, BL Add. Or. 5475, f. 17: see J. P. Losty, M. Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire, London 2012, p. 229, fig. 164. This has a similar border (though of finer quality) to our painting, with profuse illuminated floral motifs on a white ground.
For the album made for Colonel James Skinner, the Tazkirat al-'Umara, Notices of the Nobles, painted in Delhi and Haryana, circa 1830, see op. cit., pp. 226-228.
We might also compare a portrait of William Fraser, Delhi, circa 1820-25, oval with similar borders, though again of lesser quality, BL Add.Or. 4474, illustrated in W. Dalrymple, Y. Sharma, Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, New York 2012, p. 119, no. 40.