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Lot Essay
This wondrously detailed scene of a bustling market is related to a known group of large scale paintings depicting aspects of everyday life in Bengal— ranging from pilgrimages, royal processions, market scenes and rural landscapes. These genre paintings are remarkable for their blending of Mughal and Company school elements, so much that it is difficult to categorize the works as safely Company style or Provincial Mughal. Commenting on a similar painting from the Chester Beatty Library ( L. Leach, Mughal and other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, vol 2, ppl 768-778-9, no.7.103), Linda Leach hypothesizes that the distant panoramas and emphasis on daily life suggest that the type catered to British taste and that it would appear that British officials were the main patrons of this type of work. However, the minute and infinite details of the painting point to its production in a traditional Mughal miniaturist workshop. Robert Skelton has remarked that the style of this workshop recalls the work of Dip Chand, a Murshidabad artist active in the 1760s known to have completed a group of portrait miniatures for William Fullerton of the East India Company.
Set in front of a modest skyline, an impressive row of verandas sets the tone. Side by side, every individual lives his or her own life, alone, but together. The artist shows his mastery of observation and a sensitivity to this bizarre paradox with countless examples. Men and women manage their shops, offering anything from scissors, mojari loafers, machetes, paper goods, chai, and fish. Most individuals in the painting exist tangent to the marketplace. Two men brawl while their companions cheer them on in the upper right corner. Noblemen and British officers travel throughout, one by elephant, one by ox-pulled chariot, some by palanquin, and some by foot. Many men loiter near the chai shop, one man admires a white textile, a woman in a blue sari walks with her child, and some men smoke pipes. As though each person a word and each scenario a sentence, the artist develops a remarkable visual language, far more competent than the written word, at conveying the complexity, and sometimes incoherence, of daily life. Indeed, the painting reads like a paragraph, its linear arrangement resembling a handwritten letter – straight and crooked at the same time. The care and attention to each facial expression, strand of hair, and dhoti pleat bear witness to the level of scrunity employed by this workshop. The breathtaking detail and variety exalt daily life and elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary.
The present painting compares to a similar pair of paintings published by Hazlitt, Good and Fox, Indian Painting for British Patrons, 1770-1860, 1991, nos. 3 and 4, and subsequently sold at Sotheby’s London, 23 October 1992, lots 498-499. Two smaller scale paintings at the British library (see T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, pp. 200 and 489, cat. 374 i & ii.), depicting a pilgrimage scene and a rural river landscape are executed in similar style to the present lot. More recently, paintings of this school sold at the auction of the Stuart Carey Welch Collection, Sotheby’s London, 21 May 2011, lot 109 and at Sotheby’s New York, 22 September 2020, lot 368.
Set in front of a modest skyline, an impressive row of verandas sets the tone. Side by side, every individual lives his or her own life, alone, but together. The artist shows his mastery of observation and a sensitivity to this bizarre paradox with countless examples. Men and women manage their shops, offering anything from scissors, mojari loafers, machetes, paper goods, chai, and fish. Most individuals in the painting exist tangent to the marketplace. Two men brawl while their companions cheer them on in the upper right corner. Noblemen and British officers travel throughout, one by elephant, one by ox-pulled chariot, some by palanquin, and some by foot. Many men loiter near the chai shop, one man admires a white textile, a woman in a blue sari walks with her child, and some men smoke pipes. As though each person a word and each scenario a sentence, the artist develops a remarkable visual language, far more competent than the written word, at conveying the complexity, and sometimes incoherence, of daily life. Indeed, the painting reads like a paragraph, its linear arrangement resembling a handwritten letter – straight and crooked at the same time. The care and attention to each facial expression, strand of hair, and dhoti pleat bear witness to the level of scrunity employed by this workshop. The breathtaking detail and variety exalt daily life and elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary.
The present painting compares to a similar pair of paintings published by Hazlitt, Good and Fox, Indian Painting for British Patrons, 1770-1860, 1991, nos. 3 and 4, and subsequently sold at Sotheby’s London, 23 October 1992, lots 498-499. Two smaller scale paintings at the British library (see T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, pp. 200 and 489, cat. 374 i & ii.), depicting a pilgrimage scene and a rural river landscape are executed in similar style to the present lot. More recently, paintings of this school sold at the auction of the Stuart Carey Welch Collection, Sotheby’s London, 21 May 2011, lot 109 and at Sotheby’s New York, 22 September 2020, lot 368.