PROBABLY DECCAN, CIRCA 1640

Details

A GATHERING OF DERVISHES
Probably Deccan, circa 1640
Pen and wash on paper, a group of dervishes in a forest clearing smoking and preparing wine in Chinese vessels, conversing and sleeping in a woodland setting, mounted on card, verso with a page of calligraphy, 8ll. of black nasta'liq with a Persian devotional verse, gold floral margins
Folio 10 3/8 x 7 5/8in. (26.3 x 19.3cm.)

Provenance

Warren Hastings, Governor General of India (1732-1818), Daylesford House, Oxfordshire, part of an album, sold Farebrother Clark and Lye, 22 August 1853, lot 861.
Sir Thomas Phillipps
Bibliotheca Phillippica, ms.14167-8,
Anon sale, Sotheby's, London, 11 October 1982, lot 32

Literature

Swietochowski, Marie Lukens: Persian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989, fig.32, p.80.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

This image of a group of dervishes seeking religious ectasy through the use of drink is probably after a Persian original. A very fine version of this painting attributed to the artist Muhammadi of around 1590 is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (no.14.649) (Gray, B.: Persian Painting, 1977, pp.157-9).

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