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Lot Essay
Farrukh Siyar was the grandson of Bahadur Shah I and was emperor from 1713 to 1719. The emperor’s daily appearance at the viewing window (jharokha), located on the exterior wall of the palace for public audience (darshan), was a customary Mughal tradition. This official audience began to be used as a convention in Mughal portraiture from the seventeenth century. (J.P. Losty & M. Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire, London, 2012, pp. 165-166)
Dressed in an orange brocade jama with multiple strands of pearls around his turban, neck and wrists, this depiction of Farrukh Siyar is very similar to a painting of the ruler receiving the vizier Husain ‘Ali Khan, part of the Johnson Album now in the India Office Library (Losty and Roy, op.cit., fig.103, p.161). Artists usually painted Farrukh Siyar in a consistent manner – in profile, as a portly figure, with arched eyebrows and three distinct curls to his visible sideburn. For two other portraits of Farrukh Siyar in the British Library, see T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, 1981, no. 155, 157).
Dressed in an orange brocade jama with multiple strands of pearls around his turban, neck and wrists, this depiction of Farrukh Siyar is very similar to a painting of the ruler receiving the vizier Husain ‘Ali Khan, part of the Johnson Album now in the India Office Library (Losty and Roy, op.cit., fig.103, p.161). Artists usually painted Farrukh Siyar in a consistent manner – in profile, as a portly figure, with arched eyebrows and three distinct curls to his visible sideburn. For two other portraits of Farrukh Siyar in the British Library, see T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, 1981, no. 155, 157).