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Lot Essay
Seamlessly blending a wonderful sense of Deccani intensity and Mughal precision, this spectacular equestrian portrait by the artist Muhammad Ali delights in both the overall composition and the smaller detail. As Stuart Cary Welch wrote, “the picture is superb, ecstatic with arabesques, massed foliage, burgeoning flowers, sparkling metalwork, and a most ornamental huntsman astride a Nijinsky of a horse” (Welch 1985, p.231).
THE PAINTING
“It is the most elegant of hunts… The horse and rider are in flawless form, their demeanour exemplifying well-trained grace as they poise (and pose) in a dance of confident assurance in their own perfection. Wearing an orange robe and golden turban, the prince has picked an arrow from his quiver as his stallion – his legs and tail half-hennaed – prepares to gallop; both seem to have just spotted the game. The horse’s gold saddle and saddlecloth, anklets and other accoutrements are rich with flowers, as sumptuous as any Mughal illuminated page” (Welch and Welch 1982, p.198).
As Anthony Welch so eloquently describes, our elegant prince is depicted hunting. The presence of a drum at his waist indicates that he is likely hawking but there is no bird in sight, nor any prey. The scene is not a narrative one but rather a display of courtly elegance – an idealised depiction of a handsome, young prince on his magnificent steed. Seyller writes of the way that Muhammad Ali gives secondary importance to the "selectively anatomical" features of our Prince, but "indulges the traditional Persian interest in abstract line and colour…show[ing] real verve in his use of ornament, lavishing gold and painted jewels on every part of the horse’s tack" (Seyller 2011B, p.284).
The ground in our painting is alive with signs of spring. The intensity of the floral foreground draws comparison with contemporaneous Bijapuri paintings, for instance that of a Yogini painted in Bijapur, early 17th century and attributed to the Dublin painter by Zebrowski. It is now understood that this artist is Farrukh Beg (also known as Farrukh Husayn), with whom Muhammad Ali's career is inextricably linked (in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In.11A.31; published in Zebrowski 1983, pls. XII). The vibrant ground also draws compelling comparison with other Deccani works of Farrukh Beg, for instance an extraordinary painting of Sufis in a Landscape, painted circa 1601-04 (published Welch 1985, p.224). Zebrowski suggested that the artist would have served as a source of inspiration for the artist Muhammad Ali and indeed that he might have copied his work for the Emperor Jahangir (Zebrowski 1983, p.116).
THE ARTIST
When Robert Skelton published our painting in Ars Orientalis in 1957, he attributed it to the master artist Farrukh Beg - “in this case it hardly seems necessary to recount the reasons for regarding it as Farrukh Beg’s work, for it is very characteristic of his style” (Skelton 1957, p.400). The attribution to Muhammad Ali, a close contemporary of Farrukh Beg, was first made a few years later by Richard Ettinghausen, following the emergence of new material inscribed with the artist’s name, including Youth Reading in a Grove in the Freer Gallery of Art (Mughal, circa 1610; F1959.93; Ettinghausen 1961, pl.9). He cites that our painting is similar to the Freer example in many details – such as the plane tree that arches gently over the rider, the series of intensely flowering plants along the lower edge and the dark background with only a narrow sliver of sky. The same distinctive plane tree and sliver of sky appear in another work attributed to Muhammad Ali in the Raza Library, Rampur. That depicts Maulana Rum and a Student in a Garden and is dated to circa 1610-25 (Album 4, fol.6a; Schmitz and Desai, no.4, p.30). Indeed many these features also find precedent in Farrukh Beg’s work so it is easy to see why the work of these two artists has long been so closely associated.
Muhammad Ali remains an enigmatic figure, known only from a few iconic works. These works are all imbued with Persianate subject matter, Deccani intensity and colour and Mughal details and faces. Stylistically his paintings relate closely to those of Farrukh Beg and it is likely that career paths of the two were largely in parallel. Like Farrukh Beg, a Persian émigré, it seems that Muhammad Ali moved from Iran to India at a young age. His name first appears as the colourist of three unpublished works in a copy of the Jami’ al-Tawarikh created for the Emperor Akbar, dated 1596 (128a, 152b and 153a; Gulistan Palace Library, Tehran, no.2254). It is then likely that he spent time at Akbar’s court before settling in Bijapur before 1600. Whilst Farrukh Beg’s sojourn in the Deccan is confirmed through an ascription on a painting of Ibrahim Adil Shah II, Muhammad Ali’s time there lacks this documentary evidence. His works however unmistakably "exude a heady bouquet of the Deccan" (Welch 1985, p.231).
We know that Muhammad Ali, like Farrukh Beg, later moved back to the Mughal court during the reign of the Emperor Jahangir. Farrukh Beg is recorded as having returned in December 1609 and it is possibly that Muhammad Ali accompanied him. One of his known works, A Young Woman, in the San Diego Museum of Art (1990:323), is signed ‘work of Muhammad Ali Jahangir Shahi’, confirming that the painter was employed by the Emperor Jahangir (Seyller 2011, p.279). Two of his known works, the aforementioned Youth Reading in a Grove and Scholar in a Garden (attributed to Mughal India, circa 1610-15; in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 14.663) are inscribed in the lower margins in Jahangir’s hand, further demonstrating this patronage. The fact that Muhammad Ali’s lyrical style found favour with Jahangir demonstrates the emperor’s abiding taste for variants of the Persian style - an aesthetic pronounced at his princely atelier at Allahabad but also evident at the imperial studio during the first ten years of his reign. It is only in subsequent years that Muhammad Ali gradually incorporated more Mughal elements into his work (Seyller 2011B, p.279).
In this painting, we see Muhammad Ali’s mature style fully established – confidently blending the intensity of the Deccani experience with the Mughal technical perfection that one sees, for instance, in the horse and rider. Like the majority of Muhammad Ali’s works, it presents a single figure against a background of textured colour sprinkled with flowers and decorative vegetation (Beach 2012, p.212). As John Seyller notes, our painting’s "brilliant gallantry [is] now quite distinct from Farrukh Beg’s brooding and idiosyncratic manner" (Seyller 2011B, p.279). The painting is replete with Deccani idioms such as the hyper-real intense vegetation that fills the foreground, which shows none of the Mughal tendency for naturalism. He uses bold, contrasting colours such as the deep purple background and the earthy orange and gold of the costume. Features of our Prince’s costume - such as his elaborate sword holder – were fashionable only in the Deccan. Interestingly, the Deccani features seem to appear more prominently in paintings done in his later time in the Mughal atelier, perhaps appealing to his new patron’s desire for an exotic aesthetic and reflecting the Mughal court's growing dominance in military and diplomatic exchanges with Bijapur in which gifts of art and jewels took place.
One of Muhammad Ali’s important attributed works, an Equestrian Portrait of Prince Danyal (attributed to Bijapur, circa 1600-05; in a Private Collection, published Seyller 2011B, p.280, fig.1) depicts the prince with a broad, square chin and wide set eyes - features that become a hallmark of Muhammad Ali’s personal style. The painting of Prince Danyal has another feature shared with our painting. The floral decoration on the front of the saddle, there unfinished, indicates that the artist was a master in the art of illumination. In our painting, the Prince sits upon a very similar saddle, but here fully and perfectly worked. One suggestion for the relative scarcity of paintings by Muhammad Ali is that he might have worked primarily as an illuminator at the Mughal court and left Jahangir’s service early to return to Iran – certainly his skills in illumination are well-attested by his known paintings. The only evidence for this however is a painting by Reza Abbasi in the Keir Collection dated AH 1020 / 1611-12 AD with an inscription identifying the sitter as ‘Muhammad Ali the illuminator of Shiraz who had come from India’ (Robinson et.al.1976, III, no.351). If this was our Muhammad Ali however, he would only have been active at the Mughal court for a very limited period. It is more likely perhaps that this is a conflation of two individuals with a common name and of some shared skills. The reason for the paucity of Muhammad Ali’s work might instead be explained by the fact that his work has thus been defined too narrowly and is, as yet, under-studied.
THE BORDERS
This painting was later laid down on borders from the Late Shah Jahan Album (1650-58), decorated with flowering plants enclosed by linked cartouches. In this specific group of borders from the album, which were initially created to surround calligraphic panels, only two types of flowering plants are used in alternation. Elaine Wright writes that this relative simplicity is borne out of a desire for order and symmetry (Wright 2008, p.115). The elegant lattice that decorates the border draws inspiration from contemporaneous pietra dura inlaid stonework, such as that of the Taj Mahal, which was under construction at the time. For examples of related pietra dura panels that were recently exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of The Great Mughals exhibition, see Stronge 2024, pp.200-201, fig.161. Another page from the Late Shah Jahan Album with a similar lattice border, and also formerly in the Baron Maurice de Rothschild Collection, is in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (inv.no.LTS1995.2.98; published in Piotrovsky 1999, p.250, no.237). Like our page, that would originally have been designed to frame a calligraphic panel but has had a Mughal portrait of a young Shah Shuja, dateable to circa 1620, inserted into it.
THE PAINTING
“It is the most elegant of hunts… The horse and rider are in flawless form, their demeanour exemplifying well-trained grace as they poise (and pose) in a dance of confident assurance in their own perfection. Wearing an orange robe and golden turban, the prince has picked an arrow from his quiver as his stallion – his legs and tail half-hennaed – prepares to gallop; both seem to have just spotted the game. The horse’s gold saddle and saddlecloth, anklets and other accoutrements are rich with flowers, as sumptuous as any Mughal illuminated page” (Welch and Welch 1982, p.198).
As Anthony Welch so eloquently describes, our elegant prince is depicted hunting. The presence of a drum at his waist indicates that he is likely hawking but there is no bird in sight, nor any prey. The scene is not a narrative one but rather a display of courtly elegance – an idealised depiction of a handsome, young prince on his magnificent steed. Seyller writes of the way that Muhammad Ali gives secondary importance to the "selectively anatomical" features of our Prince, but "indulges the traditional Persian interest in abstract line and colour…show[ing] real verve in his use of ornament, lavishing gold and painted jewels on every part of the horse’s tack" (Seyller 2011B, p.284).
The ground in our painting is alive with signs of spring. The intensity of the floral foreground draws comparison with contemporaneous Bijapuri paintings, for instance that of a Yogini painted in Bijapur, early 17th century and attributed to the Dublin painter by Zebrowski. It is now understood that this artist is Farrukh Beg (also known as Farrukh Husayn), with whom Muhammad Ali's career is inextricably linked (in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In.11A.31; published in Zebrowski 1983, pls. XII). The vibrant ground also draws compelling comparison with other Deccani works of Farrukh Beg, for instance an extraordinary painting of Sufis in a Landscape, painted circa 1601-04 (published Welch 1985, p.224). Zebrowski suggested that the artist would have served as a source of inspiration for the artist Muhammad Ali and indeed that he might have copied his work for the Emperor Jahangir (Zebrowski 1983, p.116).
THE ARTIST
When Robert Skelton published our painting in Ars Orientalis in 1957, he attributed it to the master artist Farrukh Beg - “in this case it hardly seems necessary to recount the reasons for regarding it as Farrukh Beg’s work, for it is very characteristic of his style” (Skelton 1957, p.400). The attribution to Muhammad Ali, a close contemporary of Farrukh Beg, was first made a few years later by Richard Ettinghausen, following the emergence of new material inscribed with the artist’s name, including Youth Reading in a Grove in the Freer Gallery of Art (Mughal, circa 1610; F1959.93; Ettinghausen 1961, pl.9). He cites that our painting is similar to the Freer example in many details – such as the plane tree that arches gently over the rider, the series of intensely flowering plants along the lower edge and the dark background with only a narrow sliver of sky. The same distinctive plane tree and sliver of sky appear in another work attributed to Muhammad Ali in the Raza Library, Rampur. That depicts Maulana Rum and a Student in a Garden and is dated to circa 1610-25 (Album 4, fol.6a; Schmitz and Desai, no.4, p.30). Indeed many these features also find precedent in Farrukh Beg’s work so it is easy to see why the work of these two artists has long been so closely associated.
Muhammad Ali remains an enigmatic figure, known only from a few iconic works. These works are all imbued with Persianate subject matter, Deccani intensity and colour and Mughal details and faces. Stylistically his paintings relate closely to those of Farrukh Beg and it is likely that career paths of the two were largely in parallel. Like Farrukh Beg, a Persian émigré, it seems that Muhammad Ali moved from Iran to India at a young age. His name first appears as the colourist of three unpublished works in a copy of the Jami’ al-Tawarikh created for the Emperor Akbar, dated 1596 (128a, 152b and 153a; Gulistan Palace Library, Tehran, no.2254). It is then likely that he spent time at Akbar’s court before settling in Bijapur before 1600. Whilst Farrukh Beg’s sojourn in the Deccan is confirmed through an ascription on a painting of Ibrahim Adil Shah II, Muhammad Ali’s time there lacks this documentary evidence. His works however unmistakably "exude a heady bouquet of the Deccan" (Welch 1985, p.231).
We know that Muhammad Ali, like Farrukh Beg, later moved back to the Mughal court during the reign of the Emperor Jahangir. Farrukh Beg is recorded as having returned in December 1609 and it is possibly that Muhammad Ali accompanied him. One of his known works, A Young Woman, in the San Diego Museum of Art (1990:323), is signed ‘work of Muhammad Ali Jahangir Shahi’, confirming that the painter was employed by the Emperor Jahangir (Seyller 2011, p.279). Two of his known works, the aforementioned Youth Reading in a Grove and Scholar in a Garden (attributed to Mughal India, circa 1610-15; in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 14.663) are inscribed in the lower margins in Jahangir’s hand, further demonstrating this patronage. The fact that Muhammad Ali’s lyrical style found favour with Jahangir demonstrates the emperor’s abiding taste for variants of the Persian style - an aesthetic pronounced at his princely atelier at Allahabad but also evident at the imperial studio during the first ten years of his reign. It is only in subsequent years that Muhammad Ali gradually incorporated more Mughal elements into his work (Seyller 2011B, p.279).
In this painting, we see Muhammad Ali’s mature style fully established – confidently blending the intensity of the Deccani experience with the Mughal technical perfection that one sees, for instance, in the horse and rider. Like the majority of Muhammad Ali’s works, it presents a single figure against a background of textured colour sprinkled with flowers and decorative vegetation (Beach 2012, p.212). As John Seyller notes, our painting’s "brilliant gallantry [is] now quite distinct from Farrukh Beg’s brooding and idiosyncratic manner" (Seyller 2011B, p.279). The painting is replete with Deccani idioms such as the hyper-real intense vegetation that fills the foreground, which shows none of the Mughal tendency for naturalism. He uses bold, contrasting colours such as the deep purple background and the earthy orange and gold of the costume. Features of our Prince’s costume - such as his elaborate sword holder – were fashionable only in the Deccan. Interestingly, the Deccani features seem to appear more prominently in paintings done in his later time in the Mughal atelier, perhaps appealing to his new patron’s desire for an exotic aesthetic and reflecting the Mughal court's growing dominance in military and diplomatic exchanges with Bijapur in which gifts of art and jewels took place.
One of Muhammad Ali’s important attributed works, an Equestrian Portrait of Prince Danyal (attributed to Bijapur, circa 1600-05; in a Private Collection, published Seyller 2011B, p.280, fig.1) depicts the prince with a broad, square chin and wide set eyes - features that become a hallmark of Muhammad Ali’s personal style. The painting of Prince Danyal has another feature shared with our painting. The floral decoration on the front of the saddle, there unfinished, indicates that the artist was a master in the art of illumination. In our painting, the Prince sits upon a very similar saddle, but here fully and perfectly worked. One suggestion for the relative scarcity of paintings by Muhammad Ali is that he might have worked primarily as an illuminator at the Mughal court and left Jahangir’s service early to return to Iran – certainly his skills in illumination are well-attested by his known paintings. The only evidence for this however is a painting by Reza Abbasi in the Keir Collection dated AH 1020 / 1611-12 AD with an inscription identifying the sitter as ‘Muhammad Ali the illuminator of Shiraz who had come from India’ (Robinson et.al.1976, III, no.351). If this was our Muhammad Ali however, he would only have been active at the Mughal court for a very limited period. It is more likely perhaps that this is a conflation of two individuals with a common name and of some shared skills. The reason for the paucity of Muhammad Ali’s work might instead be explained by the fact that his work has thus been defined too narrowly and is, as yet, under-studied.
THE BORDERS
This painting was later laid down on borders from the Late Shah Jahan Album (1650-58), decorated with flowering plants enclosed by linked cartouches. In this specific group of borders from the album, which were initially created to surround calligraphic panels, only two types of flowering plants are used in alternation. Elaine Wright writes that this relative simplicity is borne out of a desire for order and symmetry (Wright 2008, p.115). The elegant lattice that decorates the border draws inspiration from contemporaneous pietra dura inlaid stonework, such as that of the Taj Mahal, which was under construction at the time. For examples of related pietra dura panels that were recently exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of The Great Mughals exhibition, see Stronge 2024, pp.200-201, fig.161. Another page from the Late Shah Jahan Album with a similar lattice border, and also formerly in the Baron Maurice de Rothschild Collection, is in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (inv.no.LTS1995.2.98; published in Piotrovsky 1999, p.250, no.237). Like our page, that would originally have been designed to frame a calligraphic panel but has had a Mughal portrait of a young Shah Shuja, dateable to circa 1620, inserted into it.