DELHI SCHOOL, CIRCA 1800

Details

AN AUDIENCE WITH A RULER
DELHI SCHOOL, CIRCA 1800
Opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper, a ruler in orange robes kneels upon a carpeted throne as his subjects, all dressed in colourful robes, look on, beyond them the palace walls and a leafy landscape, laid down between minor gold-illuminated cream borders and polychrome rules on wide gold margins decorated with polychrome floral scrolls, scuffing around edges
Painting 9½ x 6 3/8in. (24 x 16.2cm.); folio 17 1/8 x 12 1/8in. (43.5 x 30.4cm.)

Provenance

Anon sale in these Rooms, 19 October 1993, lot 15

Exhibited

Exhibition of Indian Art, Royal Academy, London, 1938, No.3B

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Lot Essay

The barefooted courtier pleading with the ruler in this painting is probably a slightly altered representation of a scene from the Akbarnama in which the courtier Abdul Rahim Khan-i Khanan is received by Emperor Akbar, (r.1556-1605). Abdul Rahim however is depicted as an older man with a white beard here, unlike the text of the epic which suggests he was much younger at the time of these events. The figures with their rounded faces and with strongly shadowed jaw lines are typical of Delhi painting from the early 19th century. A related illustration to a historical manuscript with similar figures attributed to Delhi circa 1800 is in the collection of the Berkely Art Museum, (Barbara Schmitz (ed.), After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Marg Publications, Mumbai, 2002, no.6, p.155).

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