Agra School, circa 1815

The following sixteen lots were originally bound together in a red morocco leather bound album which came down by descent in the family of the Marquis of Bute. The album entered the Bute collection either through Lady Sophia Hastings who married (daughter of the Governor General of Bengal, Sir Francis, Marquis of Hastings) the 2nd Marquis of Bute in 1845, or through the 4th Marquis who travelled to India in 1911 with George V, and acquired a number of Mughal manuscripts in the course of his visit. After the British captured Delhi and Agra in 1803, the demand for pictures of monuments of this area steadily grew. Many of the British were amateur artists and made sketches for themselves, but they found it difficult to record the intricacy of Mughal architecture and it was therefore easier to purchase the more accurate drawings produced by the local Indian artists. By 1801 large architectural drawings were readily available depicting a whole range of monuments in Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Delhi and their neighbourhoods. The Taj Mahal with views of the whole mausoleum complex,s well as details of the Entrance Gateway, the Mosque, the Central Chamber with its screen and the two cenotaphs, were favourite subjects. The Pearl Mosque at Agra, and the Tomb of Itimad-ud-Daula across the River Jumna, Akbar's Mausoleum at Sikandra, various buildings of Fatehpur Sikri, and in the Delhi Fort, Jami Masjid, the Qutub Minar and the Mausoleums of Humayun and Safdar Jung were also popular. These drawings were clearly influenced by British taste and the pictures were executed on large sheets of Whatman paper imported from England. Often the sheets of paper on which the watercolours were executed have watermarks with the years of manufacture which allows accurate dating, good paper was much sought after in India, and was often used immediately on its arrival. The Indian love of meticulous detail is seen in the treatment of the pierced marble screens and the inlay work. After 1825 there was a steady demand for drawings of monuments and Indian artists began to standardize their work. The subjects were frequently repeated and the small variations such as the boats on the Jumna or unconventional views of the monuments found in the earlier works subsequently disappeared as a result of the increased production of later works in response to the enormous demand

Details

Agra School, circa 1815
The Gateway of the Taj
inscribed as title; pencil, pen and grey ink and watercolour heightened with white, within a black lined border
21 x 26¾in. (534 x 680mm.)

Provenance

The Marquis of Bute

Literature

P.Pal, Romance of the Taj, London, 1989, p.57, pl.43, repr. in colour

Lot Essay

The mosque rises in the distance on the left and the rest-house can be seen on the right of the gateway, the central tank and part of the white mausoleum can be glimpsed through the central arch.
The itself gateway stands more than 100 ft. high. The black marble inscriptions that can be seen over the central vaulted portal are inscriptions taken from the Koran. They are probably by Amanat Khan whose name is included in the inlaid texts on the Taj Mahal

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