A folio from the Read Album: women on a terrace

INDIA, MUGHAL, CIRCA 1740-50

Details

A folio from the Read Album: women on a terrace
India, Mughal, circa 1740-50
Depicting two women seated against a bolster on a beige carpet spread with delicacies, with two ladies in attendance at right, one holding a peacock fan, all upon a on a marble terrace overlooking a silver lake with boats, houses, green hills and a walled city in the distance, the border with a multicolored floral motif enhanced with gold
Opaque pigments and gold on wasli
7½ x 4¾ in. (19.0 x 12.1 cm.), painting
16 x 11 1/8 in. (40.6 x 28.3 cm.), folio

Provenance

Private collection, Indiana

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Lot Essay

The Read Album of Mughal paintings previously belonged to Sir Charles Hercules Read, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum. The Pierpont Morgan library acquired thirty folios from the album in 1911 and the remaining forty-eight known pages are widely dispersed. While the identity of the album's compiler remains unknown, many borders date to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, indicating that this was the time at which the album was originally compiled. The pages were likely held together in several lacquered bindings.

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