INDIA, MUGHAL SCHOOL, MID-18TH CENTURY

Details

A PORTRAIT OF NADIR SHAH
INDIA, MUGHAL SCHOOL, MID-18TH CENTURY
Ink and gouache heightened with gold on paper, depicting Nadir Shah seated and leaning back on a cushion holding a curved sword and wearing a thick fur jacket over a purple robe, the face with very fine details, a vase and other objects placed before him, the ground left unfinished, within gold, white and blue borders, the reverse with a calligraphic quatrain in black nasta'liq signed Ahmad al-Hassani, mounted, framed and glazed
8¼ x 5¼in. (21 x 13.2cm.)

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Lot Essay

After Nadir Shah's defeat of the emperor Muhammad Shah's armies at Karnal, most painters working for the deposed Mughal emperor left Delhi in the 1740s.They went to other cities and provinces such as Oudh where the style continued with no noticeable differences until around 1760 (Linda York Leach Paintings from India, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, Oxford, 1998, p.166). This portrait of Nadir Shah has a very close comparable, although unfinished, in the Freer Gallery of Art dated to the middle of 18th century (https://www.asia.si.edu/collections/zoomObject.cfm?ObjectId=3476).

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