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Lot Essay
This outstanding portrait is one of the most significant early Mughal paintings and a pivotal work in the history and development of the Mughal school. Signed by the painter Dust Muhammad, it is one of an extremely small number of works that survive from the very earliest years of Mughal painting in the 1550s and early 1560s. It has been described as “intensely observed” (Brand and Lowry 1985, p.157), and “exquisite in its variety of textures and breathtaking combination of vivid colours” (Parodi 2018B, pp.56-7). The painter Dust Muhammad was a master in the royal ateliers of both the Safavid Emperor Shah Tahmasp (1514-1576) and the Mughal Emperor Humayun (1508-1556). The subject of the portrait, Shah Abu’l- Ma‘ali was a favourite courtier of Emperor Humayun, who rebelled early in the reign of Akbar. The combination of artistic and political history which the portrait embodies, as well as the remarkable and striking pose, the scale of the figure and the distinctive palette, have made it an iconic work in Indian art.
THE PORTRAIT AND INSCRIPTION
Dust Muhammad has portrayed Shah Abu’l-Ma‘ali bent forward in the act of writing on a large sheet of paper supported on a wooden board held in his left hand and resting on his right knee. He wears a bright yellow coat that drapes on the ground behind him, and a blue robe, with a striped shirt visible at the neck. On his head he wears a turban of the distinctive form associated with Emperor Humayun’s entourage (the taj-i izzat, “crown of honour”), with a flower held in the folds. The quality of the portrait is breathtaking. The long, pure curve of the figure’s neck and back that so defines the image, as well as the long curves of the front edge of his yellow coat and the sleeve, are drawn with extraordinary elegance, precision and sureness of hand. A similar level of precision is seen in the ripples and shading of the folds and creases in the drapery, especially the rumpled cuff of the sleeve and coat-ends on the ground behind him. The palette and colour-composition is striking, dominated by the contrasting yellow of the coat, blue of the robe and pale skin tones of the face and hands. It is a powerful image that indelibly imprints itself on the eye of the viewer.
The inscription that the sitter has just finished writing (see translation above) and its relation to the biographies of Abu’l-Ma‘ali and Dust Muhammad are key elements in understanding the portrait, and the interrelation of these factors has generated interesting art historical discussions. In summary: Shah Abu’l-Ma‘ali was a close companion of Humayun and here he is pictured wearing the Humayuni turban, which was discontinued after Humayun’s death in January 1556. Early in the reign of Akbar he rebelled against the new emperor. The formula Jannat Ashtiani (“Dweller in Paradise”) in the second line of the inscription suggests that Humayun had died when those particular words were written. Dust Muhammad was part of the imperial Mughal atelier and is thought to have died in India around 1560, supplying an approximate terminus ante quem for the portrait.
Robert Skelton proposed that the painting and the majority of the inscription were completed when Humayun was alive (i.e. before late January 1556), and that the two words Jannat Ashtiany had been included as soon as Humayun had died (in respect for the deceased emperor, Skelton 1994, p.42). A variation of this approach had previously been mentioned by Goswamy and Fischer, who dated the portrait to circa 1550 (Goswamy and Fischer 1987, p.34). Michael Brand and Glen Lowry dated the portrait to 1556 (Brand and Lowry 1985, pp.125, 157) and Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch took Jannat Ashtiany to indicate that it had been painted soon after Humayun’s death and dated it to 1556-1560 (Welch and Welch 1982, pp.146-8; Welch in Falk 1985, p.144). Chahryar Adle, in a long and detailed article on the painter Dust Muhammad, also dated it to 1556 (Adle 1993), and Canby, following these earlier publications, dated it to c.1556 (Canby 1998, pp.107-08).
More recently, Laura Parodi assessed the painting and inscription in conjunction with other early Mughal portraits and with an analysis of Abu’l-Ma‘ali’s biography (Parodi 2018A; Parodi 2018B) and concluded that it may have been made as a petitioner portrait representing a “polite request from a subordinate to a superior, through a more or less explicit text and a body language that expresses submission and trepidation”, and that it related to one or other episode in Abu’l-Ma‘ali’s life between 1556 and 1564, possibly his appeal to Mah Cuchak Begam for her daughter’s hand in marriage. Parodi suggested Dust Muhammad may have lived until 1564.
Notwithstanding these various nuanced opinions, as Milo Beach has stated, whether the portrait was made before or immediately following Humayun’s death, the style is certainly that practiced at Humayun’s court. (Beach 1987, p.23).
SHAH ABU’L-MA‘ALI
Shah Abu’l-Ma‘ali (d.1564), who came from a noble family from Kashgar in Central Asia, had joined Humayun’s retinue in Kabul in 1551 and had quickly risen to an influential position and become a favourite of the emperor, accompanying him on his reconquest of India in 1554-5. However, he had a strong streak of arrogance and impetuosity. When Humayun died in 1556 in a fall down the steps of his library in Delhi, having only recently regained the empire he had lost in 1540, he was succeeded by his son Akbar, who was only thirteen at the time. According to the Akbarnama, soon after Akbar’s accession, Abu’l-Ma‘ali began to display arrogant and disrespectful behaviour towards the new emperor and was seized and imprisoned, but escaped, probably aided by supporters. Over the next eight years he was an intermittent thorn in Akbar’s side. At one stage he was sent on pilgrimage to Mecca to prevent sedition at home, but generally continued his rebellious episodes, being imprisoned and escaping on more than one occasion. He was a sayyid, was of noble birth and possibly had a distant kinship to Babur or Timurid ancestors of the Mughals, and this meant he was able to gather support from the old Timurid nobility and others. In 1564 he petitioned Humayun’s widow Mah Cuchak Begam to shelter and support him and give him her daughter Fakhrunissa Begam in marriage. Mah Cuchak Begam was a powerful figure and her ten year old son Muhmmad Hakim was Akbar’s half-brother. A potential alliance would therefore have provided Abu’l-Ma‘ali with protection and a significant power-base. However, following his marriage to Fakhrunissa, he murdered Mah Cuchak, seized the young Muhammad Hakim and usurped his power. Soon after this outrage, Abu’l-Ma‘ali was finally captured and hanged. (Akbarnama, vol.2, pp.27-30, 152-6, 308-311, 314, 316-322; Bayat Humayun, vol. 2; Parodi 2018A).
DUST MUHAMMAD THE PAINTER
Dust Muhammad the painter (Dust Muhammad Musavvir, also known as Dust-i Divana) was one of the foremost artists of the Perso-Mughal world in the 16th century and one of the key figures in the critical period when artists from the mature Safavid school of painting were influencing the development of the nascent Mughal school. Laura Parodi has remarked that “His foundational role in the establishment of the Mughal kitabkhana cannot be overestimated” (Parodi 2018B, p.53). For some years it was thought that he was the same person as a calligrapher of the same name, but research, initially by Abolala Soudavar and later more comprehensively by Chahryar Adle and based on contemporary chronicles as well as the works of art themselves, confirmed that they were not the same person (see Soudavar 1992, pp.258-9, fn.74; Adle 1993). The brief biography below is based on Adle 1993, pp.238-296, and additionally for the Mughal period, Parodi and Wannell 2011, Parodi 2018A and 2018B.
Dust Muhammad the painter began his career as a star pupil of the great late Timurid master Behzad, possibly his best student, and according the contemporary chronicler Budaq Munshi he was “The first in rank … to whom no one throughout the ages can be compared. He had reached the apogee of intelligence and fineness of perception. In the art of images, his pen followed that of Master Behzad. It is possible to say that in clarity, he surpassed the Master.” (Budaq, quoted in Adle 1993, p.239). Qadi Ahmad, writing a few decades later, described Dust Muhammad as “one of the incomparable pupils of Maulana Behzad, was perfect in skill and ability. He spent some time in the service of the monarch equal in dignity to Jamshid (Tahmasp), after which he went to India and made much progress there” (Qadi Ahmad, p.180). While in Persia he followed Behzad into royal service and was among the artists of Shah Tahmasp’s atelier in Tabriz, contributing to the monumental manuscript of the Shahnama made for Shah Tahmasp in the 1520s-30s. In the late 1530s Dust Muhammad left Persia for India, joining Prince Kamran Mirza’s court in Lahore and Kabul. When Humayun re-took Kabul in 1545 following his exile in Persia, Dust Muhammad joined his entourage and in the following years became the leading royal artist in Mughal Kabul. One of his most complex works dates from this period (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, ms. Libr. Pict. A 117, fol.15r, see Welch, fig. 85; Adle, 1993, pp. 251-52), a scene of Humayun with family members and attendants in the mountains near Kabul that has been interpreted in different ways, most recently by Parodi and Wannell (2011). Dust Muhammad remained in Humayun’s service when he entered India in 1554-5 and successfully reclaimed his dominions there.
Little is known of Dust Muhammad after Humayun’s death in 1556 and during the first years of Akbar’s reign, but he was by then an old man in his seventies, and with his younger Safavid colleagues Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad having established themselves as leaders of the Mughal royal atelier, it seems likely that he was less active. Adle suggests he died in India around 1560, while Parodi suggests 1564.
He was a highly important figure in Safavid art and in the development of Mughal painting, and as well as the ostensible role he played, as described above, his influence was felt in more subtle ways in later generations. While in Iran he had been the teacher of the painter Shaykh Muhammad (see lot 75 in this sale), and Shaykh Muhammad was in turn the master of Muhammadi and Farrukh Beg. All three were important artists and Farrukh Beg also moved to India where, decades after Dust Muhammad, he became one of the most significant and original painters at the Mughal and Deccani courts.
THE INSCRIPTION ON THE REVERSE
The verso bears a page of elegant nasta‘liq calligraphy on superbly marbled paper (see above for translation), signed by Muhammad Reza, a Persian calligrapher of the late 16th century. He was a pupil of Muhammad Husayn Tabrizi and spent most of his career in Tabriz, with a sojourn in Istanbul in 1585-6. He died in Tabriz in 1627-8. Bayani records works by him dated between 1570 and 1586 (Bayani 1348 sh., pp.726-8). Calligraphic works by Persian masters were very popular in Mughal India in the 16th to 18th centuries and were frequently mounted in albums. In the case of the present folio, the meaning of the verses would be have been appropriate for the subject of the painting overleaf and were no doubt selected for that reason when the album folio was assembled some time later.
PROVENANCE
This folio was previously part of an important group of paintings collected in India in the late 18th century by the brothers William Dent (1761-1833) and John Dent (see also lots 25 and 82 in this sale). William Dent was in India from 1776 to 1796, mostly as an agent at Patna, Buxar and Tamluk, and John Dent was an officer in the Bengal Infantry from 1782 to 1792. For information on collecting practices among Europeans in India at the time, see lots 51-53 in this sale. The Dent collection, consisting of over 150 works and containing many important Indian and Persian miniatures, was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 11 April 1972. An oil painting of the Dent brothers in Bengal from 1790 by the English artist William Devis is published in Archer 1979, p.253, fig.177, col. pl.XI.
THE PORTRAIT AND INSCRIPTION
Dust Muhammad has portrayed Shah Abu’l-Ma‘ali bent forward in the act of writing on a large sheet of paper supported on a wooden board held in his left hand and resting on his right knee. He wears a bright yellow coat that drapes on the ground behind him, and a blue robe, with a striped shirt visible at the neck. On his head he wears a turban of the distinctive form associated with Emperor Humayun’s entourage (the taj-i izzat, “crown of honour”), with a flower held in the folds. The quality of the portrait is breathtaking. The long, pure curve of the figure’s neck and back that so defines the image, as well as the long curves of the front edge of his yellow coat and the sleeve, are drawn with extraordinary elegance, precision and sureness of hand. A similar level of precision is seen in the ripples and shading of the folds and creases in the drapery, especially the rumpled cuff of the sleeve and coat-ends on the ground behind him. The palette and colour-composition is striking, dominated by the contrasting yellow of the coat, blue of the robe and pale skin tones of the face and hands. It is a powerful image that indelibly imprints itself on the eye of the viewer.
The inscription that the sitter has just finished writing (see translation above) and its relation to the biographies of Abu’l-Ma‘ali and Dust Muhammad are key elements in understanding the portrait, and the interrelation of these factors has generated interesting art historical discussions. In summary: Shah Abu’l-Ma‘ali was a close companion of Humayun and here he is pictured wearing the Humayuni turban, which was discontinued after Humayun’s death in January 1556. Early in the reign of Akbar he rebelled against the new emperor. The formula Jannat Ashtiani (“Dweller in Paradise”) in the second line of the inscription suggests that Humayun had died when those particular words were written. Dust Muhammad was part of the imperial Mughal atelier and is thought to have died in India around 1560, supplying an approximate terminus ante quem for the portrait.
Robert Skelton proposed that the painting and the majority of the inscription were completed when Humayun was alive (i.e. before late January 1556), and that the two words Jannat Ashtiany had been included as soon as Humayun had died (in respect for the deceased emperor, Skelton 1994, p.42). A variation of this approach had previously been mentioned by Goswamy and Fischer, who dated the portrait to circa 1550 (Goswamy and Fischer 1987, p.34). Michael Brand and Glen Lowry dated the portrait to 1556 (Brand and Lowry 1985, pp.125, 157) and Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch took Jannat Ashtiany to indicate that it had been painted soon after Humayun’s death and dated it to 1556-1560 (Welch and Welch 1982, pp.146-8; Welch in Falk 1985, p.144). Chahryar Adle, in a long and detailed article on the painter Dust Muhammad, also dated it to 1556 (Adle 1993), and Canby, following these earlier publications, dated it to c.1556 (Canby 1998, pp.107-08).
More recently, Laura Parodi assessed the painting and inscription in conjunction with other early Mughal portraits and with an analysis of Abu’l-Ma‘ali’s biography (Parodi 2018A; Parodi 2018B) and concluded that it may have been made as a petitioner portrait representing a “polite request from a subordinate to a superior, through a more or less explicit text and a body language that expresses submission and trepidation”, and that it related to one or other episode in Abu’l-Ma‘ali’s life between 1556 and 1564, possibly his appeal to Mah Cuchak Begam for her daughter’s hand in marriage. Parodi suggested Dust Muhammad may have lived until 1564.
Notwithstanding these various nuanced opinions, as Milo Beach has stated, whether the portrait was made before or immediately following Humayun’s death, the style is certainly that practiced at Humayun’s court. (Beach 1987, p.23).
SHAH ABU’L-MA‘ALI
Shah Abu’l-Ma‘ali (d.1564), who came from a noble family from Kashgar in Central Asia, had joined Humayun’s retinue in Kabul in 1551 and had quickly risen to an influential position and become a favourite of the emperor, accompanying him on his reconquest of India in 1554-5. However, he had a strong streak of arrogance and impetuosity. When Humayun died in 1556 in a fall down the steps of his library in Delhi, having only recently regained the empire he had lost in 1540, he was succeeded by his son Akbar, who was only thirteen at the time. According to the Akbarnama, soon after Akbar’s accession, Abu’l-Ma‘ali began to display arrogant and disrespectful behaviour towards the new emperor and was seized and imprisoned, but escaped, probably aided by supporters. Over the next eight years he was an intermittent thorn in Akbar’s side. At one stage he was sent on pilgrimage to Mecca to prevent sedition at home, but generally continued his rebellious episodes, being imprisoned and escaping on more than one occasion. He was a sayyid, was of noble birth and possibly had a distant kinship to Babur or Timurid ancestors of the Mughals, and this meant he was able to gather support from the old Timurid nobility and others. In 1564 he petitioned Humayun’s widow Mah Cuchak Begam to shelter and support him and give him her daughter Fakhrunissa Begam in marriage. Mah Cuchak Begam was a powerful figure and her ten year old son Muhmmad Hakim was Akbar’s half-brother. A potential alliance would therefore have provided Abu’l-Ma‘ali with protection and a significant power-base. However, following his marriage to Fakhrunissa, he murdered Mah Cuchak, seized the young Muhammad Hakim and usurped his power. Soon after this outrage, Abu’l-Ma‘ali was finally captured and hanged. (Akbarnama, vol.2, pp.27-30, 152-6, 308-311, 314, 316-322; Bayat Humayun, vol. 2; Parodi 2018A).
DUST MUHAMMAD THE PAINTER
Dust Muhammad the painter (Dust Muhammad Musavvir, also known as Dust-i Divana) was one of the foremost artists of the Perso-Mughal world in the 16th century and one of the key figures in the critical period when artists from the mature Safavid school of painting were influencing the development of the nascent Mughal school. Laura Parodi has remarked that “His foundational role in the establishment of the Mughal kitabkhana cannot be overestimated” (Parodi 2018B, p.53). For some years it was thought that he was the same person as a calligrapher of the same name, but research, initially by Abolala Soudavar and later more comprehensively by Chahryar Adle and based on contemporary chronicles as well as the works of art themselves, confirmed that they were not the same person (see Soudavar 1992, pp.258-9, fn.74; Adle 1993). The brief biography below is based on Adle 1993, pp.238-296, and additionally for the Mughal period, Parodi and Wannell 2011, Parodi 2018A and 2018B.
Dust Muhammad the painter began his career as a star pupil of the great late Timurid master Behzad, possibly his best student, and according the contemporary chronicler Budaq Munshi he was “The first in rank … to whom no one throughout the ages can be compared. He had reached the apogee of intelligence and fineness of perception. In the art of images, his pen followed that of Master Behzad. It is possible to say that in clarity, he surpassed the Master.” (Budaq, quoted in Adle 1993, p.239). Qadi Ahmad, writing a few decades later, described Dust Muhammad as “one of the incomparable pupils of Maulana Behzad, was perfect in skill and ability. He spent some time in the service of the monarch equal in dignity to Jamshid (Tahmasp), after which he went to India and made much progress there” (Qadi Ahmad, p.180). While in Persia he followed Behzad into royal service and was among the artists of Shah Tahmasp’s atelier in Tabriz, contributing to the monumental manuscript of the Shahnama made for Shah Tahmasp in the 1520s-30s. In the late 1530s Dust Muhammad left Persia for India, joining Prince Kamran Mirza’s court in Lahore and Kabul. When Humayun re-took Kabul in 1545 following his exile in Persia, Dust Muhammad joined his entourage and in the following years became the leading royal artist in Mughal Kabul. One of his most complex works dates from this period (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, ms. Libr. Pict. A 117, fol.15r, see Welch, fig. 85; Adle, 1993, pp. 251-52), a scene of Humayun with family members and attendants in the mountains near Kabul that has been interpreted in different ways, most recently by Parodi and Wannell (2011). Dust Muhammad remained in Humayun’s service when he entered India in 1554-5 and successfully reclaimed his dominions there.
Little is known of Dust Muhammad after Humayun’s death in 1556 and during the first years of Akbar’s reign, but he was by then an old man in his seventies, and with his younger Safavid colleagues Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad having established themselves as leaders of the Mughal royal atelier, it seems likely that he was less active. Adle suggests he died in India around 1560, while Parodi suggests 1564.
He was a highly important figure in Safavid art and in the development of Mughal painting, and as well as the ostensible role he played, as described above, his influence was felt in more subtle ways in later generations. While in Iran he had been the teacher of the painter Shaykh Muhammad (see lot 75 in this sale), and Shaykh Muhammad was in turn the master of Muhammadi and Farrukh Beg. All three were important artists and Farrukh Beg also moved to India where, decades after Dust Muhammad, he became one of the most significant and original painters at the Mughal and Deccani courts.
THE INSCRIPTION ON THE REVERSE
The verso bears a page of elegant nasta‘liq calligraphy on superbly marbled paper (see above for translation), signed by Muhammad Reza, a Persian calligrapher of the late 16th century. He was a pupil of Muhammad Husayn Tabrizi and spent most of his career in Tabriz, with a sojourn in Istanbul in 1585-6. He died in Tabriz in 1627-8. Bayani records works by him dated between 1570 and 1586 (Bayani 1348 sh., pp.726-8). Calligraphic works by Persian masters were very popular in Mughal India in the 16th to 18th centuries and were frequently mounted in albums. In the case of the present folio, the meaning of the verses would be have been appropriate for the subject of the painting overleaf and were no doubt selected for that reason when the album folio was assembled some time later.
PROVENANCE
This folio was previously part of an important group of paintings collected in India in the late 18th century by the brothers William Dent (1761-1833) and John Dent (see also lots 25 and 82 in this sale). William Dent was in India from 1776 to 1796, mostly as an agent at Patna, Buxar and Tamluk, and John Dent was an officer in the Bengal Infantry from 1782 to 1792. For information on collecting practices among Europeans in India at the time, see lots 51-53 in this sale. The Dent collection, consisting of over 150 works and containing many important Indian and Persian miniatures, was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 11 April 1972. An oil painting of the Dent brothers in Bengal from 1790 by the English artist William Devis is published in Archer 1979, p.253, fig.177, col. pl.XI.