CENTRAL INDIA, CIRCA 1800

An embroidered panel of the same type as ours in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was attributed by Joseph M. Dye III to 18th or 19th century Goa or the Deccan (Joseph M. Dye III, The Arts of India: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2001, no.232, pp.479-481). Dye mentions that previous examples from this group have been variously attributed to Gujarat and Northern India. He discounts these theories on the grounds that the provenance of many of this group, which were found in Portugal and Spain, indicate a connection with the Portuguese colonial presence in India. Dye does however confirm that there is no known production of embroidery centred in Goa but suggests that it originated from the nearby Deccan which has a history of producing embroidered textiles. Our panel differs from the one in Virginia in that in its decoration it has a large number of figures. Both male and female, they are generally warriors, astrological symbols or portrayed engaging in leisure activities such as smoking and drinking. This mix does fit with what Dye described as ‘eclectic’ as one would expect for a production linked to a major export port with links to Europe and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia. For a further embroidered panel of the same type attributed to 18th century Deccan which entered the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1916 see Rahul Jain, Rapture: the Art of Indian Textiles, Delhi, 2011, no. 55, pp. 160-61.