LUCKNOW, INDIA, CIRCA 1810

Executed in Lucknow in the early nineteenth century, this painting and that of the following lot, show the strong European influence which artists of the period were subjected to. The death of Nawab Shuja al-Dawla (r.1754-75) also brought an end to a period of energetic court patronage in Faizabad. While Shuja al-Dawla absorbed many artists leaving the declining Mughal court, his successor Asaf al-Dawla (r.1775-97) was more keen to patronise European artists like Johann Zoffany and Ozias Humphry who came to his court in Lucknow (S. Markel and T. Bindu Gude, India’s Fabled City: the Arts of Courtly Lucknow, Los Angeles, 2011, p.182). Sensitive to changing tastes, Indian court artists began painting scenes familiar to a European clientele in watercolour. The present lot has much in common with the aquatint plates in particularly Thomas Williamson and Samuel Howitt’s Oriental Field Sports, first published in 1807. A very similar composition in a more verdant landscape is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (M. Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period, London, 1992, p.124).