MUGHAL INDIA, SECOND QUARTER 17TH CENTURY

Details

A PRINCE AND A HOLY MAN MEET IN A LANDSCAPE
MUGHAL INDIA, SECOND QUARTER 17TH CENTURY
Ink and wash on paper, laid down on card between minor orange and gold rules, with large panels of shikasteh calligraphy above and below, mounted, framed and glazed
Drawing 6 7/8 x 4 ½in. (17.5 x 11.4cm.); folio 12 1/8 x 8 ¼in. (30.8 x 20.8cm.)

Provenance

Sotheby's, 25th March 1987, Lot 2

Engraved

In shikasteh above: a hemistich from a qasidah by the Qajar poet Qa'ani
In shikasteh below: a hemistich from a ghazal by Amir Khusraw

Special notice

These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

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Lot Essay

The subject of this drawing, the meeting of a prince and a holy man, is a well-known theme in Mughal painting. Here, the prince is sitting under a tree, with his head humbly bowed, deep in conversation with a hermit, in a rocky landscape surrounded by attendants. The composition is very similar to an earlier, well-known painting from the Akbari period, ‘A prince visiting a hermit’, circa 1585-90, now in the collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan (B.N. Goswamy, Eberhard Fischer, Wonders of a Golden Age, exhibition catalogue, Zurich, 1987, no.14). S.C. Welch attributed the Akbari work to the Iranian master artist, ‘Abd al-Samad, who rose to eminence in the Mughal atelier under Akbar’s reign. It is possible that the artist of the present work would have been aware of the earlier 16th century work and had perhaps used it as a prototype for this drawing.

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