INDIA, PROVINCIAL MUGHAL, SECOND HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY

Lit by a young maiden’s candle light, a handsome prince clandestinely ascends a thin, knotted rope to reach his betrothed. The prince has removed his shoes in order to wade through the palace’s moat, which reflects the full moon in its misty waters, as his horse and groomsmen keep watch in the rocky foreground. The dramatic night scene is illustriously heightened with gold, from the large onion dome, to the intricate accents seen in the interior architecture, the prince’s jama, and the bejeweled horse-shaped saddle pommel.
While this isn’t an especially common theme in Indian painting, several other examples are known. Of the Mughal examples, the present lot certainly stands out in quality. Compare the painting, for example, to a provincial Mughal album page from Lucknow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (acc. no. M.2013.178), drafted with far less consideration to the detail of the architecture, the subtly of the water, and modeling of the figures and vestments. Also compare the present work to a more closely related provincial Mughal composition, sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 7 October 2011, lot 384, for 15,000 GBP; while the painting style can be considered more rudimentary, the close similarities between the two paintings brings into question whether the referenced lot might have been commissioned as a copy after the present work.
Other paintings of this subject were commissioned in Rajput courts as well. See, for example, a nineteenth-century example from Kotah, published by S.C. Welch in Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah, London, 1997, pp. 208-9, no. 67. The subject was also popular in the Kishangarh school of painting, see for example a painting sold at Sotheby’s New York, 21-22 March 1990, lot 91.