INDIA, MID-19TH CENTURY

Details

A MINIATURE PORTRAIT OF HYDER ALI
INDIA, MID-19TH CENTURY
Opaque pigments heightened with gold on ivory, wearing an elaborate large round turban with plumes and a red tunic
3 ½in. (9cm.) high

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Lot Essay

Hyder Ali Khan (c. 1720 – 7 December 1782) became the de facto ruler of Mysore as Sarvadhikari (Chief Minister) by 1761. He fought against the military advances of the British East India Company during the First and Second Anglo–Mysore Wars, and he was the innovator of military use of the iron-cased Mysorean rockets. He is well-known through his eldest son, Tipu Sultan.

This miniature portrait was painted after the engraving by Robert Keck after William Dickes, 1846. Dickes painted a fictitious image of Hyder Ali to illustrate a novel by Walter Scott. Subsequently, Dickes’s image was engraved by Keck and published in the frontispiece of Sir Walter Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter, Abbotsford Edition of the Waverley Novels 1846.

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